Did Texas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones give Ted Nugent the use of the Texas Stadium for a benefit concert to build a border wall on the U.S. Southern border? No, that's not true: the story was made up by a liberal satire website that also invented the whole Ted Nugent concert in an earlier article it published. None of it is real.
The story originated from an article published by America's Last Line of Defense on January 7, 2019 titled "BREAKING: Jerry Jones Gives Ted Nugent a Night at Texas Stadium and $3 Million For Wall Benefit Concert" (archived here) which opened:
Texas Stadium is about to be the home of the biggest benefit show on Earth. Jerry Jones, the sole owner of the complex, has given Ted Nugent permission to put on his "Build the Wall Benefit Concert" as early as January 30th. Jones has thrown in the cost of the lights and a million dollars in money to help pay the crew and set up concession stand fundraisers.
Nugent, a longtime conservative and a Trump supporter, is well-known in the world of Rock and Roll for not getting into the Hall of Fame, and to veterans as a draft-dodger. Those days, however, are behind him. According to the Nuge:
"I know I had a rough go in my earlier years and I regret crapping myself to avoid Nam, but damn...it was Vietnam. Nobody wanted to go there. The fact that I betrayed my country is null and void when you consider that I'm gonna raise a couple billion for our security. Then they'll appreciate ol' Uncle Ted."
Users on social media only saw this title, description and thumbnail so it would not have been clear to the people liking and sharing it that it was all just satire:
BREAKING: Jerry Jones Gives Ted Nugent a Night at Texas Stadium and $3 Million For Wall Benefit Concert
Thank you, Mr. Jones!
But the story itself was posted under the category "Satire Isn't Always funny" and the header of the site has a caption that reads "Information you probably shouldn't trust". That was certainly the case with this article.
Texas Stadium was demolished in 2010:
Texas Stadium - Wikipedia
Texas Stadium, along with Arrowhead Stadium (1972), Rich Stadium (1973), and the Pontiac Silverdome (1975), were part of a new wave of football-only stadiums (all with artificial turf) built after the AFL-NFL merger.
And the supposed Ted Nugent concert to raise money for a border wall? Made up by the same site:
Fake News: Ted Nugent Did NOT Announce 'Build The Wall' Benefit Concert | Lead Stories
Did singer Ted Nugent announce he was organizing a benefit concert to "Build The Wall"? 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: Supreme Court Did NOT Rule 5-4 That Oaths Not Taken on Bibles Are Illegal
- Fake News: Nancy Pelosi's Daughters NOT Arrested Smuggling Contraband at the Border
- Fake News: Ted Nugent Did NOT Announce 'Build The Wall' Benefit Concert
- Fake News: Loretta Lynn Did NOT Die And Left NO Note For Fans
- Fake News: Trump Family Did NOT Donate $1 Billion To Wall Fund
