Fake news is everywhere these days. And while professional journalists are doing their best to expose the problem while also maintaining their own high standards of integrity, it’s become a field day for trolls, pranksters and performance artists.
The latest case in point is a man going by a man who duped conservative media into believing he was running a massive company that paid people to protest Donald Trump.
And when the hoax was finally exposed, it was a hilarious moment that quickly went viral.
The fake company called “Demand Protest” claims it pays professional protesters a retainer of $2,500 a month along with $20 per hour in wages and thousands more in expenses paid out to a team of 1,800 “operatives.”
Of course, that retainer alone adds up to monthly expenses of more than $4,500,000 and $54,000,000 annually, to say nothing of the other related costs.
Still, the conspiracy theory of paid protesters is a favorite cause amongst diehard conservatives so many of them were more than happy to take the bait.
That is until conservative Fox New host Tucker Carlson decided to have the alleged ringleader, Dom Tullipso, on his show for an interview. Carlson made it clear from the start that he and his staff were on to the hoax:
“This is a sham, your company isn’t real, your website is fake, the claims you have made are lies, this is a hoax. Let me start at the beginning, however, with your name, Dom Tullipso, which is not your real name. It’s a fake name, we ran you through law enforcement-level background checks and that name does not exist. So let’s start out with the truth. Tell me what your real name is.”
But “Tullipso” refused to break character even as he gave a wink and a nod to the absurdity of it all:
“We are greatly, greatly supportive of national treasures such as Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, and Peyton Manning, and we really support their efforts to really get the truth out there, and in the case of the current client we have right now, uh, that client is, um, very interested in releasing the Roswell papers.”
That’s right, it’s not a typo. He not only mentioned the UFO conspiracy theory goldmine of Roswell but replaced the name of Chelsea Manning with retired NFL legend Peyton Manning. The performance art continued as he then said his entire organization had suddenly shifted their mission to supporting Trump rather than protesting him.
To his credit, Carlson went from angrily prodding the guest to breaking down in laughter and actually complimenting him for pulling off the hoax. And that’s when “Tullipso” finally broke character for a moment, offering a pretty stern rebuke to Carlson and other outlets that bought into the hoax to begin with:
“It’s pretty darn easy these days to just say whatever the heck you want on national TV and have it passed off as truth. And it’s pretty incredible to me, I don’t know, how easy it was to get the coverage we got.”
