Will Judge Jeanine Pirro be the next justice on the Supreme Court and has President Donald Trump confirmed this? No, that's not true. The news was made up by a site that likes to take tidbits of real news and events and then adds a headline to their own version of the story to make it more clickbait-worthy in order to attract more visitors and earn more money through advertising. Trump has made no such announcement (yet, you never know).
The story originated from an article published by YourNewsWire on June 27, 2018 titled "Trump: Judge Jeanine Pirro Will Be Next Supreme Court Justice" (archived here) which opened:
Judge Jeanine Pirro is one of President Trump's top picks for Supreme Court Justice, according to Donald Trump Jr.
Following the announcement Wednesday that Justice Associate Anthony Kennedy will retire in July, Trump Jr. hinted that his father is eyeing the outspoken Conservative judge as a likely replacement.
Users on social media only saw this title, description and thumbnail:
Trump: Judge Jeanine Pirro Will Be Next Supreme Court Justice
Judge Jeanine Pirro is one of President Trump's top picks for Supreme Court Justice, according to Donald Trump Jr.
All of that is not really what happened. A marketing researcher and pollitical polling writer named Josh Jordan suggested on Twitter Pirro could become the next justice on the Supreme Court but he quickly added he only meant it sarcastically. Donald Trump Jr. then retweeted the joke tweet and added several emoticons indicating tears of laughter.
This would be pretty awesome😂😂😂 https://t.co/TrM714IMAR
-- Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) June 27, 2018
I hope you all realized I was being sarcastic. The only reason anyone would ever nominate to Jeanine Pirro to anything is to own the libs, which is sadly why Trump might actually do it. pic.twitter.com/gOCDiM7aLz
-- Josh Jordan (@NumbersMuncher) June 27, 2018
There you have it: two tweets obviously meant in jest and YourNewsWire turns it into something that is definitely happening.
Of course Trump is free to nominate anyone he chooses to the Supreme Court, as long as he can get the Senate to confirm the nomination. So it still might happen but it seems higly unlikely.
YourNewsWire has published several hoaxes and fake news articles in the past so anything they write or publish should be taken with a large grain of salt. Their Facebook page "The People's Voice" recently lost its verification checkmark according to a report from MMFA.
The Terms of Use of the site also make it clear they don't really stand behind the accuracy of any of their reporting:
THE PEOPLE'S VOICE, INC. AND/OR ITS SUPPLIERS MAKE NO REPRESENTATIONS ABOUT THE SUITABILITY, RELIABILITY, AVAILABILITY, TIMELINESS, AND ACCURACY OF THE INFORMATION, SOFTWARE, PRODUCTS, SERVICES AND RELATED GRAPHICS CONTAINED ON THE SITE FOR ANY PURPOSE.
The site was profiled in the Hollywood reporter where it was described as:
Your News Wire, a 3-year-old website of murky facts and slippery spin, is published by Sean Adl-Tabatabai and Sinclair Treadway -- a Bernie Sanders supporter in 2016 -- out of an apartment in L.A.'s historic El Royale.
RationalWiki described it as:
YourNewsWire (styled as YourNewsWire.com[1]) is an Los Angeles-based clickbait fake news website known for disseminating conspiracy theories and misleading information, contrary to its claimed motto ("News. Truth. Unfiltered").[1]
A while ago we also reported that YourNewsWire had rebranded itself as NewsPunch by changing its domain name in an apparent effort to evade filtering/blocking. It appears the site has changed back to it's old name in the mean time but you can still see the NewsPunch name in the contact email address in the footer.
We wrote about yournewswire.com before, here are our most recent articles that mention the site:
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