“Laura Ingraham just fired!!!”

A clickbait headline said that Fox News’ Laura Ingraham was fired, but the story that follows didn’t back up that phony statement.

“Breaking: Laura Ingraham just fired!!!” stated an April 22 headline on Red State Wave, which styles itself as a conservative website.

The article was written by “MAGA student,” a reference to Trump’s 2016 campaign slogan Make America Great Again. A disclaimer states that redstatewave.com is a “passive service for storage and dissemination of the works that redstatewave.com members may choose to post and distribute.”

Facebook users flagged the post as being potentially fabricated, as part of the social network’s efforts to combat online hoaxes. The headline is a hoax and intended to draw in readers.

The story that followed never said that Ingraham was fired. Instead it said she “fired off on Democrats.”

The story posted Ingraham’s April 20 tweet related to the recent Democratic National Committee lawsuit filed against President Donald Trump’s campaign, Russia and WikiLeaks alleging election interference. The DNC filed the lawsuit in federal court in New York April 20.

“My personal advice to Democrats is this: Keep doing what you’re doing because the American people are a lot smarter than you give them credit for,” Ingraham tweeted.

The conservative website sides with Ingraham.

“Democrats continue to show the American people that they have no identity and no sustaining message for their platform,” the website said. “2018 may not be ‘in the bag’ as they have predicted.”

In March, Ingraham took a week off as advertisers pulled out of her show following her comments about Parkland survivor David Hogg. The controversy began when she posted an article about Hogg being rejected by four colleges and said he was whining about it. She later apologized.

Fox News said at the time that her break was a pre-planned vacation. On her show, The Ingraham Angle, she said that she was spending Easter break with her children.

Fox News co-president Jack Abernethy issued a statement of support for Ingraham to the Los Angeles Times on April 2:

“We cannot and will not allow voices to be censored by agenda-driven intimidation efforts. We look forward to having Laura Ingraham back hosting her program next Monday when she returns from spring vacation with her children.”

A headline said that Ingraham was “just fired,” but the story refers to her firing off at Democrats. The headline is designed as a trick to draw in readers. We rate this statement Pants on Fire.