A special pullout section titled "Bye-bye: A Guide to Bringing Him Down" was placed inside the satirical paper.
By TZVI JOFFREUpdated: JANUARY 17, 2019 15:53US President Donald Trump speaks during a bilateral meeting with Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on the sidelines of the 73rd session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, September 26, 2018(photo credit: CARLOS BARRIA / REUTERS)
Counterfeit copies of the Washington Post were circulated in Washington D.C. on Wednesday with the headline "Unpresidented: Trump hastily departs White House, ending crisis," NPR reported on Thursday.A fake website closely resembling the Post's reported a secretive resignation, global celebrations, and Mike Pence being sworn in as president.The Washington Post rushed to clarify that these fake papers were "not Post's products."A special pullout section titled "Bye-bye: A Guide to Bringing Him Down" was placed inside the satirical paper.In an interview with NPR, L.A. Kaufmann, an anti-Trump organizer, said that "this paper is a dream; it's not a deception." Kauffman created the paper with author Onnesha Roychoudhuri and activist pranksters "Yes Men."The fake news story portrayed Trump being forced from office by left-wing activists' protests.Kaufmann planned the distribution for nine months and wanted to tie its release to the upcoming Women's March. The paper and the online edition were dated for May 1, but people were still confused by how closely they resembled the real Post.This was not the first time the Yes Men have spoofed a newspaper. In 2008, they claimed responsibility for releasing more than 1 million fake copies of The New York Times falsely reporting the end of war in Iraq.Within the fake Post was a self-referential article with the headline "Fiction Washington Post eerily predicted real events."Trump has repeatedly attackedthe Post and other media sources as "fake news."
