A rumour online claims that country singer Jason Aldean had gigs in Alabama cancelled after he “sold out” to Saturday Night Live and claimed “people should not own more than one gun.”
The rumours link back to an article that was originally published on the website AsAmericanAsApplePie.org. That article claims that Aldean – who was singing during the moments Stephen Paddock killed 58 spectators at a country music festival in Las Vegas – blamed the NRA on the massacre and claimed people should not own more than one gun.
The article also claims that Aldean “took a knee” on the Saturday Night Live show as the anthem played.
The article reads in part –
Joining up with liberals to push gun control may not have been in country music star Jason Aldean’s best interest.
During the show’s opening moments, the guy who brought us “Dirt Road Anthem” and other tunes completely sold out his values when he said that “people should not own more than one gun” and blamed the Las Vegas tragedy on the NRA.
He then sang liberal Tom Petty’s “Don’t Back Down” as the crowd of liberals cheered and whooped and hollered like their grandpappy’s latest batch of moonshine was done.
“So I want to say to them, ‘We hurt for you, and we hurt with you.’ But you can be sure that we’re going to walk through these tough times together, every step of the way,” Aldean said, punctuating his anti-gun message. “Because when America is at its best, our bond, and our spirit, it’s unbreakable.”
The article is an example of fake news, and the majority of the details in the article have been made up.
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What’s true in the article is as follows –
– It is true that Aldean appeared during a cold opening of Saturday Night Live.
– It is true that Aldean covered Tom Petty’s “Don’t Back Down”.
– One of the quotes attributed to Aldean in the article that starts with ‘We hurt for you’ is genuine.
What’s false in the article –
– Aldean never blamed the incident on the NRA
– Aldean never said people should not own more than one gun
– Aldean never gave any anti-gun message or implied that gun laws needed to be changed in light of the shooting.
– Aldean never took a knee during the national anthem.
– Aldean never had gigs canceled as a result of his SNL appearance.
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The website that originally published the story, AsAmericanAsApplePie.org, is a fake news website with a disclaimer that sort of says as much –
When no one can trust the lying fake news liberal media anymore because they hate us and guns and Harley Davidson and meat and OUR president, As American as Apple Pie is here to be your beacon of something you can kinda rely on sometimes, but not really because only God can control our fate in this crazy, twisted world. God Bless America and Amen.
The fake news site is owned by Christopher Blair who operates a number of other fake news sites that – clearly target conservative readers with subjects designed to anger them.
Other purveyors of fake news have also copied and pasted the same article to their own sites including defensepatriot.club and conservativepaper.com