Fact Check: GSA Has NOT Been Paying Chelsea Clinton $46,000 a Month Since 2003 -- Story Originated On Satire Website

Fact Check

  • by: Maarten Schenk
Fact Check: GSA Has NOT Been Paying Chelsea Clinton $46,000 a Month Since 2003 -- Story Originated On Satire Website Labeled Satire

Did the General Services Administration send Chelsea Clinton $43,000 per month since 2003? No, that's not true: That story originated on a website named "The Dunning-Kruger Times" which has a clear disclaimer it publishes satire. It is run by a man who runs a network of sites and Facebook pages designed to trick conservatives into sharing made up stories.

The story was published as an article (archived here) on The Dunning-Kruger Times on February 26, 2025 titled "The GSA Has Been Paying Chelsea Clinton $46,000 a Month Since 2003" which opened:

For over two decades, the General Services Administration (GSA) has quietly sent Chelsea Clinton a $46,000 monthly check. While government watchdogs and confused taxpayers have repeatedly asked why...

From there on the story gradually became more and more absurd, positing the existence of such things as the "Chelsea Clinton National Contingency Preparedness Initiative", the title of "America's Official Backup First Daughter", a project named the "Chelsea Wellness Check" and a government department known as the "Bureau of Clinton Emotional Security."

For readers that hadn't caught on by then, The Dunning-Kruger Times is a satirical website with an about page (archived here) that has following disclaimer:

About Us

Dunning-Kruger-Times.com is a subsidiary of the 'America's Last Line of Defense' network of parody, satire, and tomfoolery, or as Snopes called it before they lost their war on satire: Junk News

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.

The website is named after the Dunning-Kruger effect, a term from a psychology experiment that describes the phenomenon of being ignorant of one's own ignorance. (That experiment has been disputed by a math professor.)

It is run by self-described liberal troll Christopher Blair, a self-professed liberal from Maine who for years has run networks of websites set up to troll conservatives with made-up news items in order to get them to share his posts. He often goes by the nickname "Busta Troll." A 2018 BBC profile called Blair "the Godfather of fake news," describing him as "one of the world's most prolific writers of disinformation."

His websites usually have multiple satire disclaimers and the stories very often contain obvious hints they are not real, like category names indicating they are fiction, links to "sources" that instead go to funny or offensive images or an "S for Satire" logo added to the images used as illustration. Another telltale sign is the name "Art Tubolls" (anagram for "Busta Troll") for characters in the stories. Blair also frequently pays homage to two of his friends who passed away by using their names ("Joe Barron" and "Sandy Batt") in stories.

Blair's stories have been widely copied by spammy, foreign website networks trying to make a buck by spamming American conservatives with clickbait headlines.

Here you can find some of the many, many stories from Blair's websites Lead Stories debunked over the years.

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  Maarten Schenk

Maarten Schenk is the co-founder and COO/CTO of Lead Stories and an expert on fake news and hoax websites. He likes to go beyond just debunking trending fake news stories and is endlessly fascinated by the dazzling variety of psychological and technical tricks used by the people and networks who intentionally spread made-up things on the internet.

Read more about or contact Maarten Schenk

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