Fact-checking website Snopes has reportedly contacted the White House after President Trump retweeted an article from the popular satirical website, “The Babylon Bee.”
According to Disrn, Snopes’ Dan Evon, who has clashed with the Bee on previous occasions, sent an email to the White House which confirmed that “President Trump recently retweeted a post from @JennaEllisEsq containing a fake quote from an entertainment article.” Evon then queried whether the President was “aware that this quote was fake when he sent it” and asked why the tweet wasn’t “accompanied by a message labeling the quote as fiction.”
Below is the tweet that the President retweeted Wednesday:
With a tongue-in-cheek piece, the Bee suggested that the impeachment process was continuing to work in the President’s favor. “House Dems Unveil Surefire Plan to Get Trump Reelected,” read the witty headline.
The tweet was posted by Jenna Ellis, Senior Legal Advisor to the Trump 2020 Campaign.
“This is yet another idiotic instance of ‘fact-checking’ the President for his excellent sense of humor,” She told Disrn. “The fake news media refuses to show the wonderfully kind, fun, and generous side of our President. Instead, they pompously pretend they have to take every tweet or joke at a rally seriously.”
Seth Dillon, CEO of the Babylon Bee, said that he was “not surprised” by the action taken against his website.
“They don’t like conservatives, so they’re intent on painting us as a fake news outlet, rather than the well-known satire publication that we are,” he added.
It’s just “one more example of their bristling at humor they don’t like,” Dillon added.
In August, Faithwire reported that the fact-checking site had doubled down on its monitoring operations of the Bee, claiming that such sites are “a problem for democracy” because “understanding online political satire isn’t easy.”