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Vice President Mike Pence is arguably one of the most easily parodied politicians of the Donald Trump administration--no small feat, considering the motley crew of spin doctors, advisors and senior officials Trump has managed to assemble. Nevertheless, Pence’s extremely old-fashioned views towards women (for example, he calls his wife "mother" ) and his striking resemblance to Johnny Quest's Race Bannon have made him an easy target for meme-makers and satirists alike. So when the seemingly credible website officialmikepence.com that roasts the vice president began circulating online last week, the internet got a mighty chuckle.
The website is a textbook case of a 21st-century political satire, complete with a counter enumerating the amount of successful "gay conversions," a reference to Pence's belief that being gay is a condition that can be reversed with therapy, and a presidential campaign banner that lists "Pence/Christ 46." And since the Trump administration has had a, shall we say, tenuous relationship with cybersecurity and a propensity to get pranked, many Twitter users jumped to the conclusion that Pence's website had been hacked.
well, someone has hacked VP pence’s website https://t.co/iRnadxrGzv pic.twitter.com/9RZH8Mzqf7
— kelly cohen (@politiCOHEN_) August 11, 2017
whoever hacked mike pence's website is our next poet laureate pic.twitter.com/IFuSnFKZOF
— jaboukie young-white (@jaboukie) August 11, 2017
someone hacked mike pence's official website and it is a work of art pic.twitter.com/VccQB3lCxq
— Suz A. (@suzaminah) August 11, 2017
But alas, the rumor that Mike Pence’s website was hacked by a jolly troll is untrue. The website was actually a work of satire brought to life by Funny or Die as part of its April Fools' Day 2017 event. So how did the idea of a hack get started? On August 9th, the Democratic Party's longtime operative Scott Dworkin shared the site with his followers on Twitter, though without mentioning a “hack" or its satirical nature.
This Mike Pence for President website is amazing :) #ImpeachTrumphttps://t.co/SopGoNyQha
— Scott Dworkin (@funder) August 9, 2017
In the following 48 hours, the idea of a hack continued to grow through Twitter and Reddit, and even some journalists were fooled. Inverse writer Jack Crosbie admitted to writing half of his article on the website thinking it was a legit hack.
Well, as it turns out, fake news goes both ways.
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