Paul Horner (November 5, 1978 – September 18, 2017)[1] was an American writer, comedian and contributor to fake news websites.
[16] Fox News did a live broadcast about one of Horner's stories as being factual: Barack Obama had personally funded a Muslim museum so it could stay open during the government shutdown of 2013.
[17][18] A stir was caused across the Internet as St. George, Utah, was the focus of an article posted on National Report claiming the city had made pornography illegal with first-time offenders receiving 30 days in jail.
[21] In 2015, he wrote a fake story that Yelp was suing South Park that received wide circulation.
[22] By 2015, he had written several fake stories about DeQuincy, Louisiana, which said that the town had been under attack from gay zombies, had legalized polygamy, and had banned twerking, discussing the color of any dress (in response to the viral story about the dress), and Koreans; he told a local news station that he originally targeted it because "my friend Brandon Adams said there is like 4,000 people that live there, and all they do is drink Old Milwaukee's Best and beat their wives" and that he kept targeting it because he had received death and castration threats in response to his first story.
[30][31][32] Horner later claimed that his work during this period was intended "to make Trump's supporters look like idiots for sharing my stories".
[44][45] Horner spoke at the European Parliament in March, speaking about fake news and the importance of fact checking.
Horner said that sites like The Onion give away the gag in the headline so the information presented is not as powerful because the reader knows it is a joke, but in his stories, Horner believed that when he wrote an article about Donald Trump saying that he will deport all the Jews in America, people would actually listen and reconsider their support of the president.
Casey said the county's medical examiner performed an autopsy which showed there were no signs of foul play.