Newsweek Gets Mocked Into Next Week for 'Fact-Checking' Supposed 18th-Century Painting of Trump
Sometimes—actually, a lot lately—a news outlet faceplants so badly that you almost feel sorry for them. Almost.
It’s hard to feel sorry for Newsweek, though, because this fail is so stupid that you almost can’t help but laugh out loud. As our sister site Twitchy reported, the outlet decided a clearly joking tweet accompanied by an equally obviously AI-generated image was worthy of a fact check.
Do these people get paid for this?
Here’s how it went down: a user named “bone” posted to social media, saying, “This 1721 painting by Deitz Nuützen predicted the Trump-Elon-RFK McDonalds dinner.” You don’t even have to look any further to know that what follows next is either going to be a joke or the ravings of a lunatic.
In this case, the name of the “painter” (search for Deez Nutz if you don't get it) should have set off the alarm bells of anyone with a clue:
As of this writing, Newsweek has not pulled the idiotic report from their website.
X owner Elon Musk’s reputation of being incredibly smart survived this devious attempt at misinformation—he clearly wasn’t fooled:
“Bone” himself got a kick out of the silliness:
He even created a mock detailed history of the imagined painter:
Troll level 11.
I almost feel sorry for the poor guy who had to write the fact check. After all, if your editor tells you to write something up, you better get to it.
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