A salacious (and fake) story in December 2017 about then-Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer was the work of a prodigious “satirical” blog.
The Last Line of Defense (LLOD) blog claimed that Schumer would resign from his position after being revealed to be a hypocrite:
Chuck Schumer, the holier-than-thou Democrat who has repeatedly called for Judge Roy Moore to drop out of the Senate race over bogus sexual assault charges, may be facing a sex scandal of his own. Schumer’s daughter, Lisa, has come forward to admit that her father was quite the ladies man…to her high school cheerleader friends.
The post was published days before Moore lost a special election in Alabama for a senatorial seat to Democratic Party candidate Doug Jones; Moore’s candidacy sank after several women accused him of harassing or attacking them when they were teenagers.
As is always the case with LLOD and its various affiliates, the story is fake. In this case it wasn’t even an original “joke;” just seven months earlier the blog posted another made-up piece saying that Schumer had resigned because then-U.S. President Donald Trump “has enough on him to ruin his marriage and send him to jail.”
In reality, of course, Schumer continues to serve in office as of May 5 2022 as Senate Majority Leader.
Throughout its various incarnations, LLOD has included various disclaimers. In this case, it read:
sat·ire ~ˈsaˌtī(ə)r
noun
the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, OR ridicule to expose and criticize people’s stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues.
If you disagree with the definition of satire or have decided it is synonymous with “comedy,” you should really just move along.
But the blog’s goal, allegedly, is to provoke right-wing readers and others to share its content either blindly or unknowingly — which does happen often.
Update 5/5/2022, 1:56 p.m. PST: This article has been revamped and updated. You can review the original here. -ag