[Paul Horner] created fake stories for his website National Report that were likely to find a believing audience. In one fake story,
The Washington Post reports, he claimed that President Barack Obama used his own money to keep open a "federally funded" Muslim culture museum during a government shutdown. Horner was delighted that
Fox News reported that story as fact before they backtracked.
"Is National Report the fake news site, or Fox News?" he asked the newspaper. "You decide."
In an interview with the
Post after the 2016 election Horner said, "I think Trump is in the White House because of me."
"His followers don't fact-check anything — they'll post everything, believe anything," he said. "His campaign manager posted my story about a protester getting paid $3,500 as fact. Like, I made that up. I posted a fake ad on Craigslist."
...
His fake story about Obama invalidating November's election result was shared more than 250,000 times on Facebook, according to the
Post. Horner
told BuzzFeed that another of his bogus stories, which claimed 20 million Amish people had committed to vote for Trump, turned up in Google News and garnered 750,000 page views in two days.
Horner told the newspaper that
he was making $10,000 a month from Google-powered ads on his websites.
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