Website claiming Trump thwarted deep state blackout is known for publishing fabricated stories

A difficult to decipher Facebook video leans on a discredited website and long debunked claims to push a fresh batch of misinformation. 

"What … martial law!!!" reads the June 7 video’s headline. "Trump and military thwart DS!"

A narrator in a video shared by the post can be heard starting around the 1:50-minute mark saying: "Military, Trump thwart deep state blackout, and that says deep state blackout on Memorial Day, Real Raw News."

This post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

As we’ve previously reported, Real Raw News publishes fabricated stories using a pseudonymous byline. Its "About Us" page features a disclaimer saying the site contains "humor, parody and satire," but the author has defended his stories as truth. 

They aren’t. The June 5 story cited in the Facebook post is no exception. 

"Military and Trump thwart deep state Memorial Day blackout," the headline says. 

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stated on August 21, 2018 in in a blog post

"California lawmakers are planning to push free abortion pills on all students across the state as part of a ‘super progressive’ new policy."

The story cites anonymous sources who claimed "a CIA whistleblower on May 19 arrived at Camp Pendleton with a dire warning, saying that the criminal Biden regime had put in motion an intricate mission to hack the grid and throw the country into turmoil." 

There’s no evidence to support this claim. A planned attack on the country’s power grid would be a huge news story, but no credible media outlets have covered such a story. And looking online we found no other sources to corroborate the allegation.

Other "trending posts" featured alongside the story are similarly baseless. Among them: headlines saying that Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky was hanged, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was executed, and former Attorney General Jeff Sessions was executed.

We rate this post Pants on Fire!