Did country singer Loretta Lynn die after checking into hospice care earlier? 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. Earlier on a site from the same network falsely posted a story about her checking into hospice but that was not real either.
The story originated from an article published by America's Last Line of Defense on December 30, 2018 titled "Loretta Lynn Leaves Note For Fans, Dies Peacefully" (archived here) which opened:
Loretta Lynn checked into hospice yesterday looking to spend the last month or two of her life enjoying life on a morphine drip. Unfortunately, this morning, she passed away in her bed with a smile on her 93-year-old face and a note to her fans at her side. The note said:
"Dear fans, I'm dying. I wouldn't be so okay with it if our President was anyone but the wonderful Donald Trump. Please support him in the next election."
Loretta has also donated her entire estate to the MAGA 2020 campaign, and urges everyone else to do the same:
"Whether you have a few dollars or millions, give it to Donald. Don't let him suffer when the Democrats start registering the caravan to vote."
Users on social media only saw this title, description and thumbnail and they would not have known it was fake from that:
Loretta Lynn Leaves Note For Fans, Dies Peacefully
What a nice lady.
Earlier today a site belonging to the same network of satirical websites made up the story about her checking into hospice and leaving her estate to Donald Trump's re-election campaign:
Fake News: Loretta Lynn Did NOT Enter Hospice or Sign Estate Over To MAGA2020, Also NOT Dead | Lead Stories
Did country singer Loretta Lynn enter hospice care and did she sign over her estate to Donald Trump's re-election campaign MAGA2020? 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.
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: Trump Family Did NOT Donate $1 Billion To Wall Fund
- 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
