Did the Trump family donate a billion dollars to Brian Kolfage's GoFundMe campaign to build a wall on the US-Mexico border? No, that's not true. The story was published by a liberal satire website that tries to educate gullible Trump supporters and Republicans about the need to actually click and read links before sharing or liking them in order to avoid being embarrassed by fans of the site later. All the events described in the article are not real.
The story originated from an article published on December 30, 2018 titled "BREAKING: Trump Family Donates $1 Billion To Wall Fund" (archived here) which opened:
After being the first President to ever fly into a combat zone unannounced and heroically meeting members of our special forces, President Trump and his family have landed safely in Florida and are preparing a huge announcement. The family's PR firm has released a statement that confirms that the facts that are about to come out aren't speculation from untrusted sources inside the administration, they are untrusted speculation from another source altogether. Director of Presidential Image and Propaganda, Art Tubolls, told our reporter in the field: "The Trump family is donating $1 billion to the border wall GoFundMe started by the brave and heretic Senior Mailman Bri-Bri Kolfags. They aren't going to declare it or tell anyone where they got it, they're just donating it. President Trump will sign an Executive Order making donation sources anonymous if the money is going to the public trust."
Users on social media only saw this title, description and thumbnail:
BREAKING: Trump Family Donates $1 Billion To Wall Fund
They are true Americans.
The site comes with a clear satire disclaimer at the bottom of each article:
sat·ire ~ˈsaˌtī(ə)r
noun
the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, OR ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues.
If you disagree with the definition of satire or have decided it is synonymous with "comedy," you should really just move along.
The owner and main writer of the site is self-professed liberal troll Christopher Blair, a man from Maine who has made it his full time job to troll gullible conservatives and Trump supporters into liking and sharing his articles. He runs several other websites, including potatriotpost.us, dailyworldupdate.us and nofakenewsonline.us. Sometimes he is also known under his nickname "Busta Troll". A second man working on the sites is John Prager as revealed in this earlier story we wrote.
Articles from Blair's sites frequently get copied by "real" fake news sites who often omit the satire disclaimer and any other hints the stories are fake. Blair has tried to get these sites shut down in the past but new ones keep cropping up and he keeps knocking them down.
Blair and his operation were profiled by the Washington Post on November 17, 2018 by Eli Saslow:
'Nothing on this page is real': How lies become truth in online America
November 17 The only light in the house came from the glow of three computer monitors, and Christopher Blair, 46, sat down at a keyboard and started to type. His wife had left for work and his children were on their way to school, but waiting online was his other community, an unreality where nothing was exactly as it seemed.
If you are interested in learning more about Blair and the history of his sites, here is something to get you started:
The Ultimate Christopher Blair and America's Last Line of Defense Reading List | Lead Stories
STORY UPDATED: check for updates below. Yesterday Eli Saslow at the Washington Post wrote a fantastic article about Christopher Blair, a man from Maine who has been trolling conservatives and Trump supporters online for years and occasionally even made a living out of it.
If you see one of his stories on a site that does not contain a satire disclaimer, assume it is fake news. If you do see the satire disclaimer it is of course also fake news.
NewsGuard, a company that uses trained journalist to rank the reliability of websites, describes wearethellod.com as:
A site that publishes false stories and hoaxes that are often mistaken for real news, part of a network named America's Last Line of Defense run by hoax perpetrator Christopher Blair.
According to NewsGuard the site does not maintain basic standards of accuracy and accountability. Read their full assessment here.
We wrote about wearethellod.com before, here are our most recent articles that mention the site:
- Fake News: President Trump Did NOT Order Drug Tests for All Members of Congress
- Fake News: President Trump Did NOT Order DOJ To Stop Using Arabic Numerals
- Fake News: Mike Pence NOT To Resign 'At The Request of the President'
- Fake News: Democrats Did NOT Cave, Did NOT Authorize Full Funding Of Wall To Avoid Shutdown
- Fake News: Penny Marshall Did NOT Donate Estate to Trump 2020
