On July 23 2020, a Facebook link to an article claiming that American football player Tom Brady threatened to quit playing if anyone on his team was to kneel began circulating:
Clicking through to the link led to the following content:
Tom Brady: ‘If Anyone on My Team Kneels, I Quit’
[…]
Brady announced to team ownership and to his teammates his thoughts on the whole kneeling controversy. The team’s co-owner, Joe Barron, was so moved by Brady‘s enthusiasm that he recorded the whole speech he gave in the locker room that day:
“Everybody here knows how I feel about this country. We are the luckiest people on earth to live here and we should be showing gratitude for it every single day.
This brings me to kneeling for our flag and our anthem. You can probably guess that I’m not for it. It’s an insult to our soldiers, to our veterans, to our President, and to every single citizen who does what they can do every single day to make this country as great as it is. It’s a disgrace and, as far as I’m concerned, an act of treason.
I won’t stand for it. I won’t stand for your kneeling. Let me be perfectly clear, if anybody on this team kneels, I walk. I will be off the field and out the door in an instant. Don’t test me.
And remember, I won six Super Bowls. I am the best. You guys are nothing without me. N-O-T-H-I-N-G. I AM THIS TEAM.”
But if readers paid any mind to the header at the top, it included the phrase, “Satire for your confirmation bias”:
An “About Us” tab began:
Americaslastlineofdefense.com is a subsidiary of the “America’s Last Line of Defense” network of parody, satire, and tomfoolery, or as Snopes called it before they lost their war on satire: Junk News[.]
And back on Facebook, difficult-to-miss text on the right-hand column of the page read:
NOTHING ON THIS PAGE IS REAL None of it. Not a bit.
In spite of numerous disclaimers marking the content as “satire,” the post claiming that Tom Brady pledged to “quit” if anyone on his team “kneels” was shared tens of thousands of times on Facebook since its publication.