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But after talking to them 1-on-1, it became evident that these are real gay men. There is proof of transphobic astroturfing in gay communities on Reddit, for example. This is a fake story you fool- Keith Edwards "osting fake screenshots to show much you hate fake news," wrote Reason reporter C.J. RT donnodubus: At first I assumed these transphobic gay accounts were all fake. "This is a fake story you fool," replied Keith Edwards, communications director for gubernatorial candidate Nikki Fried. "I have often shared satirical and humorous memes and tweets." "It was clearly a joke," Pushaw writes in an email to New Times. In fact, she says it was meant to be humorous. Screenshot via LGBT Nation According to Snopes, the screenshot of the bogus Washington Post article Pushaw shared - which is rated "False" - likely originated from the homophobic dog meme.Īs of Tuesday evening, Pushaw had not deleted her tweet. On the same day Pushaw shared the bogus screenshot, the online news magazine LGBTQ Nation published a real story with that same headline, written by the site's managing editor, Alex Bollinger, about Whitney Chewston and her gay owners, who explained how the meme started after they posted satirical photos on Instagram. Though Lorenz didn't write the story and the Washington Post didn't publish it, a white dachshund named Whitney Chewston really has become known as the "homophobic dog," thanks to viral images of her with a glass of red wine, accompanied by bigoted statements like "not too fond of gay people." "I would have assumed a press secretary could recognize the difference between a fake meme page screenshot and a real news article," Lorenz tells New Times. As Lorenz, her colleagues, and a number of other Twitter users pointed out to the press secretary for the governor of the country's third-largest state, the screenshot Pushaw shared is fake: The headline was apparently Photoshopped onto a Washington Post article template. "More cutting edge journalism from the 49 year old Washington Post activist infamous for showing up masked on random people's doorsteps & sliding into the DMs of tiktok teenagers," Pushaw tweeted. On May 16, Pushaw shared a screenshot on Twitter that appeared to show a Washington Post article headlined, "This dog is the new face of online homophobia," alongside a photo of a white dachshund and Washington Post technology reporter Taylor Lorenz's byline. Ron DeSantis' press secretary, Christina Pushaw, states on her Twitter bio that she's "here to debunk false narratives." But in a dramatic turn of events, it appears she might have recently fallen for one.