Post about Trump renewing anti-Muslim law comes from a satire site


A Facebook post says that many “Muslamic laws” have become illegal because of new legislation passed in May 2020.

This Facebook post links to a blog that claims “President Trump has re-signed Senator McCarthy’s landmark law making any kind of Muslamic law illegal in the United States.” The blog also features a picture of President Donald Trump in the Oval Office holding up a signed document, flanked by Vice President Mike Pence and former Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.

Both the Facebook post and the blog it points to are bogus.

The picture with the blog post is from 2018, not 2020. (Nielsen resigned in April 2019.) It was taken by photographer Jim Lo Scalzo for the European Pressphoto Agency on June 20, 2018, when Trump signed an executive order halting his policy of separating migrant children from their parents at the U.S. border. The photo was featured by many news sites at the time.

The story, which lampoons aspects of Islam, is also fake and was copied from a satire site. The Facebook link sends you to a website called Live Free or Die, but the text originated on a satirical website called BustaTroll, part of a network of fake-news sites run by Christopher Blair, who has told PolitiFact that his goal is to “mess with conservatives.”

RELATED: If you’re fooled by fake news, this man probably wrote it

The original site has a warning that “everything on this website is fiction,” but the story has been copied on blogs that don’t make that distinction. 

We rate this Pants on Fire!

By
Emily Venezky
Staff writer
May 22, 2020

Truth-o-meter Ruling

Pants on Fire!

IF YOUR TIME IS SHORT

  • This was copied word-for-word from a satire website

Statement

Trump re-signed 1952 law “making Muslamic law illegal”

Context

a Facebook post

Speaker/Target

Statement Date

May 17, 2020
Our Sources

Live Free or Die, President Trump Re-Signs 1952 Law Making Muslamic Law Illegal Again. Do you support this?, May 16, 2020

Time, The Trump Administration Won't Say How Many Separated Children It's Still Holding. The Clock Is Ticking, July 2, 2018

Chicago Tribune, Morning Spin: Rauner praises Trump for executive order halting family separations, calls for immigration reform, June 22, 2018

Los Angeles Times, Column: The truth about ‘zero tolerance’: It doesn’t work and always leads to disaster, June 22, 2018

BustaTroll, President Trump Re-Signs 1952 Law Making Muslamic Law Illegal Again, accessed on May 22, 2020

BustaTroll, About, accessed on May 22, 2020

PolitiFact, If you're fooled by fake news, this man probably wrote it, May 31, 2017

Translations

Language: en

More by This Author

Latest Fact Checks