Comedian Michael Ian Black Shares Fake News in Attempt to Smear Breitbart as Racist

MichaelIanBlackBreitbartBashing
Theo Wargo/Getty Images for Nantucket Film Festival
Daniel Nussbaum

Actor-comedian Michael Ian Black shared a link to a fake news website in an attempt to criticize Breitbart News as “Jew-bashers” in a post on his social media account on Saturday.

Writing on his Twitter account, the Child’s First Book of Trump author posted a link to a fake news website, bartbartnews.com, to claim that Breitbart News had posted a “Jew-bashing piece” because it’s “what they love.”

When informed by a Twitter user that the link he had posted was fake, Black responded by further bashing former Breitbart News chairman and current White House chief strategist Steve Bannon.

Earlier Saturday, the 45-year-old Wet Hot American Summer star tweeted a response to a Breitbart News article that had mentioned him, writing that he had “finally” been “attacked by Breitbart.” The article noted that Black was one of several celebrities who had criticized President-elect Donald Trump over the ongoing violence in Aleppo, Syria.

The bartbartnews.com website is clearly fake; its header features an upside-down version of the real Breitbart.com’s “B” logo and also includes a tagline: “Where America Gets More News.”

“Bartbart News is a source of news that’s more truthful than other news. We only report on real things and pride ourselves on the things we do well,” the fake website’s “About” section reads.

When reached for comment on Sunday, Black — who got his start in Hollywood on the MTV comedy show The State and and is currently filming the Netflix series Wet Hot American Summer: 10 Years Later, the second followup to the 2001 movie — explained that he had linked to the fake site in error and did not remove the post because he anticipated he would be criticized for doing so.

“I linked to the site in error and, in my next tweet, admitted my error,” Black wrote in a tweet. “I didn’t remove it because the last time I removed an offending post, I got attacked for both posting and then removing the post. I figured it was better just to leave the admission of error and original post in place.”

“Steve Bannon remains a white supremacist with anti-Semitic leanings and a history of domestic abuse,” he added.

Notably, Black’s tweets represent precisely the kind of “targeted harassment” (predicated on fake news, no less) that Twitter has accused conservative commentators of perpetrating, including Breitbart’s own Milo Yiannopoulos. Yiannopoulos was banned from the service earlier this summer.

 

Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum

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