Did a real "senior coordinating producer for the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner" (WHCD) say journalists stole 147 bottles of wine? No, that's not true: The person who posted the claim is a social media content creator who labels his work as "satirical fiction." Posts on his account typically use a boastful style, as he pretends to head a variety of companies and organizations or casts himself in fictitious roles.
The claim appeared in a post and video (archived here) by the Peter Girnus (@gothburz) account on X on April 27, 2026. It read, in part:
What I cannot tell you is how 147 of those bottles left the building during an active shooter evacuation
[...]
188 bottles placed. 41 recovered. 147 unaccounted for. One agent shot. Zero guests injured. Zero bottles broken. A free press for a free people. The press is free. The wine was $76 a bottle. They took it anyway.
This is what a screenshot of the video in the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of post by @gothburz on X.)
The bio of the account (archived here) reads:
The Cyber Populist | Hacks computers by day. Hacks narratives by night. | Your favorite vendor's worst nightmare. | Holding the pen.
Jacqui Heinrich, a Fox correspondent and executive board member and incoming president of the WHCA, flagged the post on her X account (archived here) on April 27, 2026. She said:
This lunatic isn't 'senior coordinating producer' of anything, much less anything related to the WHCA. No part of this is true - including the timing of events he couldn't even manage to get right in fabricating this BS
Girnus responded to Heinrich, also on his X account (archived here), acknowledging his post was fictitious:
Hi Jacqui! This is satirical fiction. I'm not a WHCD producer: it's a first-person fictional narrator I use as a rhetorical device, a format I write in regularly. The piece uses real footage of guests grabbing wine bottles during an active-shooter evacuation to ask a question about priorities. I respect your reporting on the actual event. Keep up the good work.
