Did House Speaker Nancy Pelosi call Social Security recipients "just a burden on society" or even "leeches"? 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 false quote originated in an article (archived here) published by BustaTroll.org on November 14, 2019, under the title "Pelosi: 'Social Security Recipients Are Just A Burden On Society'". It opened:
It's no secret that the Democrat Party wants to eliminate the senior's income and medical programs that citizen's have paid into all their lives. They constantly talk about massive cuts to both Social Security and Medicare. Cortez and Omar are known to have called the programs 'entitlements' and seek their elimination. House Democrats are constantly stealing from SS to fund their own socialist pet projects.
And now Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, has publicly stated her disdain for the systems that our seniors have earned and which keep them from become homeless and destitute. At a recent $5000-a-plate fundraising event for orphaned San Francisco lemurs, Pelosi, drink in hand, raged about the greatest generation and their place in America today:
"These people are leeches. All they do is suck from the public teat. Take, take, take."
The story was published in categories named "Pelosi Satire with Chile Sauce and Liquid Cheese" and "Satire and/or Conservative Fan Fiction". There were several other satire logos and disclaimers on the page.
The site is part of the "America's Last Line of Defense" network of satire websites run by self-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 rebranded all his active websites and Facebook pages so they carry 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 that 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.
NewsGuard, a company that uses trained journalists to rank the reliability of websites, describes bustatroll.org 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.
