Did a January 6 "insurrectionist" who had been pardoned by President Donald Trump accidentally burn down his own house during the Super Bowl after he lit a pile of his teen daughter's Taylor Swift shirts on fire? No, that's not true: This is a made-up story published by an account that describes itself as "Dada news. Halfway true comedy and satire by Dash MacIntyre. I don't report the facts, I improve them." There is no credible news reporting of an incident matching these details occurring anywhere in the United States on Super Bowl Sunday, February 9, 2025.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on Threads by @thehalfwaypost on February 10, 2025. It was captioned:
BREAKING: A January 6th insurrectionist pardoned by Donald Trump accidentally burned down his house yesterday during the Super Bowl after he lit a pile of his teen daughter's Taylor Swift t-shirts on fire.
This is how the post appeared at the time of writing:
(Source: Threads.net screenshot taken on Wed Feb 12 16:57:22 2025 UTC)
The title page (archived here) for the @thehalfwaypost account (pictured below) contains a linktr.ee link to additional social media pages and websites, along with this disclaimer:
Dada news. Halfway true comedy and satire by Dash MacIntyre. I don't report the facts, I improve them. Get my Substack comedy right into your inbox ⬇️
(Source: Threads.net screenshot taken on Wed Feb 12 17:18:12 2025 UTC)
Several times a day The Halfway Post account publishes posts with the same "Breaking" label as seen in this fake story about the house fire. Lead Stories used keywords from the post with Google (pictured below, on top) to discover if any relevant news stories exist from the week of the Super Bowl -- they don't. Lead Stories also did a Google search (archived here) using the text of this post (pictured below, on bottom) -- this surfaced copies of the post on other Halfway Post social media accounts and also shows the post shared by people who seemed unaware the post had a satire origin.
(Source: Lead Stories composite image with Google.com screenshots taken on Wed Feb 12 23:54:09 2025 UTC)
Additional Lead Stories fact checks on claims involving the Super Bowl can be found here.
