Fake Versions of The Washington Post Are Floating Around D.C.

Folks in Washington were fooled by a fake version of The Washington Post on Wednesday. The newspaper appeared with the date May 1, 2019 and featured the main headline, "Unpresidented: Trump hastily departs White House, ending crisis." The fake version of the paper included anti-Trump and pro-progressive stories.

The Post's public relations department took to Twitter to let readers know that was not the actual version of their publication:

There are fake print editions of The Washington Post being distributed around downtown DC, and we are aware of a website attempting to mimic The Post’s. They are not Post products, and we are looking into this.
— Washington Post PR (@WashPostPR) January 16, 2019

Later in the day, the "trickster activist collective" called the Yes Men took responsibility for creating the paper as well as a fake website that resembled The Post's. The website eventually went dark late Wednesday.

Jacques Servin, one of the founders of the Yes Men, helped lead the fake paper's creation, which was supposed to be a grassroots effort to support the impeachment of President Donald Trump.

"Te idea was a newspaper from the future and how we got there – like a road map for activists," Servin told the real Post.

Yes Men spent $40,000 on 25,000 copies of the fake paper. They estimate that roughly 10,000 were handed out. According to the group, they raised $36,000 from their mailing list.

This isn't the first time the group did something of this nature.

From The Post's coverage of this debacle:

It put together a similarly fake copy of the New York Times in 2008. That fake edition, which came out after the election of President Barack Obama, had stories depicting liberal activists putting pressure on the new administration. For more than 20 years tehy have pretended to represent official groups, such as the World Trade Organization and U.S. Chamber of Commerce, at phony news conferences.
The stunt involving the fake Washington Post newspapers also included two emails sent out Wednesday morning designed to look like they came from a Post account. The first announced the fake news of Trump's departure and the second was labeled as an "errata," correcting the first.