Did singer Taylor Swift say that she'll force Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce to leave the Chiefs next season if the team doesn't fire Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker? No, that's not true: This claim originated on the satirical network America's Last Line Of Defense. Their Facebook bio has the line, "Nothing on this page is real."
The claim appeared in a post on Facebook (a similar post is archived here) on May 18, 2024. The post included a composite image of all three individuals with text on the bottom third reading:
Taylor Swift Says She'll Force Travis Kelce to Quit The Chiefs Next Season if the Team Doesn't Fire Harrison Butker
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Tue May 21 13:10:04 2024 UTC)
The post's caption read, "That didn't take long. She doesn't want her man to be 'poisoned' by Butker's thoughtful, endearing words. The Chiefs will be an interesting organization to watch next season, patriots."
This claim comes after Kansas City Chief kicker Harrison Butker made controversial statements about women and the LGBTQ+ community in a commencement speech at Benedictine College on May 11, 2024.
The claim was posted by the Facebook page, "America's Last Line of Defense." The page labels its contents as "Satire/Parody" and their Facebook bio reads:
The flagship of the ALLOD network of trollery. Nothing on this page is real.
ALLOD
The site is part of the "America's Last Line of Defense" (ALLOD) network of satire websites run by self-professed liberal troll Christopher Blair from Maine along with a loose confederation of friends and allies. He runs several websites and Facebook pages with visible satire disclaimers everywhere. They mostly publish made-up stories with headlines specifically created to trigger Republicans, conservatives and evangelical Christians into angrily sharing or commenting on the story on Facebook without actually reading the full article, exposing them to mockery and ridicule by fans of the sites and pages.
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 omit the satire disclaimer and other hints the stories are fake. One of the most persistent networks of such sites is run by a man from Pakistan named Kashif Shahzad Khokhar (aka "DashiKashi") who has spammed hundreds of such stolen stories into conservative and right-wing Facebook pages in order to profit from the ad revenue.
When fact checkers point this out to the people liking and sharing these copycat stories some of them get mad at the fact checkers instead of directing their anger at the foreign spammers or the liberal satire writers. Others send a polite "thank you" note, which is much appreciated.
Other Lead Stories fact checks on Taylor Swift are here.
