Did Nancy Pelosi's military budget committee put five aircraft carriers up for sale? No, that's not true. The story was published by a liberal satire website that tries to mislead Trump supporters and Republicans into sharing made up stories that are clearly marked as satire when you actually click them. Articles from the site are frequently copied by foreign-run fake news websites. The people liking and sharing these stories are enriching foreign website operators or a liberal from Maine via the ad revenue generated with the content which is probably not what they expected or wanted.
The story originated from an article published by Daily World Update on November 10, 2019 titled "Nancy Pelosi's Military Budget Committee Puts 5 Aircraft Carriers Up For Sale" (archived here) which opened:
For two years, the Democrats had no control over anything. During that time, President Trump took our military from the laughing stock Obama made it and upgraded it to a world power once again. He did things like order ammunition so our troops had something to shoot with. He ordered another round of obsolete planes to fill the gaps the Democrats left when they sold all of our F-16s to Belarus.
But the most important thing he did was to order 5 new "state-of-the-art" aircraft carriers so that the 28 floating cities and the tens of thousands of men and women out there on the high seas would have adequate protection.
Users on social media only saw this title, description and thumbnail:
Nancy Pelosi's Military Budget Committee Puts 5 Aircraft Carriers Up For Sale
The truth is right there in front of you.
The story was posted under a category named "Satire Guaranteed to Enrage the Common Tater" and the page itself was covered in further satire labels and logos. The photo of the "aircraft carrier" actually came from the Marvel Comics universe, it is the fictional helicarrier which can be seen in this movie clip:
Technically there also is no such thing as the "Military Budget Committee", a real news story would probably refer to that as the Defense Subcommittee of the House Committee on Appropriations.
NewsGuard, a company that uses trained journalist to rank the reliability of websites, describes dailyworldupdate.us as:
A news site that publishes false stories and hoaxes that are often mistaken for real news. The site is part of a network 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.
The site is part of the "America's Last Line of Defense" network of satire websites run byself-professed liberal troll Christopher Blair from Maine along with a loose confederation of friends and allies. Blair has been in a feud with fact checking website Snopes for some time now and has also criticized other fact checkers in the past who labeled his work "fake news" instead of satire. In reaction to this he has recently rebranded all his active websites and Facebook pages so they carry extremely visible disclaimers everywhere.
Every site in the network has an about page that reads (in part):
About Satire
Before you complain and decide satire is synonymous with "comedy":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.Everything on this website is fiction. It is not a lie and it is not fake news because it is not real. If you believe that it is real, you should have your head examined. Any similarities between this site's pure fantasy and actual people, places, and events are purely coincidental and all images should be considered altered and satirical. See above if you're still having an issue with that satire thing.
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.
Here is a video of Blair explaining how his process works:
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.
We wrote about dailyworldupdate.us before, here are our most recent articles that mention the site:
- Fake News: NO Ocasio-Cortez Bill Requires Seniors to Renew Driver's Licenses Monthly
- Fake News: NO Leading Democrats Facing Indictment for Orchestrating a Coup d'etat
- Fake News: Kamala Harris Did NOT Say "Our Military Are Soulless Cowards. Their Budget Must Be Cut."
- Fake News: NO FBI Surveillance, Malia Obama NOT Seen Leaving Antifa Meeting In Baltimore
- Fake News: Trump Did NOT File Lawsuit To Deport George Soros
