Texas governor Greg Abbott is facing ridicule after he fell for a fake story on a satirical website that claimed country music star Garth Brooks had been booed off a stage for refusing to ban Bud Light.
Mr Abbott shared a link to the parody site The Dunning-Kruger Times on his official Twitter account on Sunday that claimed Brooks had been targeted at the 123rd Annual Texas Country Jamboree in Hambriston after calling his conservative fans “a**holes”.
“Go woke. Go broke,” Mr Abbott tweeted. “Good job, Texas.”
There was just one problem: the jamboree didn’t exist, and neither did the city of Hambriston.
The Dunning-Kruger Times, named after a cognitive effect where people with low expertise or ability overestimate their knowledge, labels itself as a “network of parody, satire, and tomfoolery”.
“Everything on this website is fiction,” the site explains. The purported author of the story, headlined Garth Brooks Booed Off Stage at 123rd Annual Texas Country Jamboree, was listed as “patriot” Flagg Eagleton.
Mr Abbott deleted the tweet without an explanation or apology, but it was preserved and roundly criticised on Twitter.
“Gov Abbott just accidentally posted a satire article because he wants to hate on queer Texans and Garth Brooks so bad,” wrote Democratic Congressman Greg Casar.
“The Texas Country Jamboree doesn’t exist. Hambriston, Texas is not real. And the Governor is not fit to tweet, much less govern,” he added.
.@GregAbbott_TX just accidentally posted a satire article because he wants to hate on queer Texans and Garth Brooks so bad.
— Greg Casar (@GregCasar) June 25, 2023
The Texas Country Jamboree doesn’t exist. Hambriston, Texas is not real. And the Governor is not fit to tweet, much less govern.
Happy pride! 🏳️🌈 pic.twitter.com/Q5UJHPf66v
Teacher Judy Hockenbrough wrote that “poor Greg Abbott got caught in his lies this time”.
“There are a couple of big problems with Abbott’s tweet: The city of Hambriston doesn’t exist and the article is completely fake. Abbott fails Texas everyday.”
Mr Abbott frequently weighs in on culture war issues on social media, last week urging warring tech billionaires Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk to go through with their much-hyped MMA bout.
He has also signed into law some of the country’s most punitive anti-LGBT+ legislation.
Texas is facing crippling power outages amid an unprecedented heat wave.
Meanwhile, Brooks, who has sold more than 157 million albums, has yet to respond publicly to the kerfuffle.
In 2022, Brooks performed two sold-out concerts in Texas at AT&T Stadium in Arlington and Houston’s NRG Stadium to a combined audience of about 147,000 fans.
