Profane post attacking SCOTUS justices from parody account, not Keith Olbermann | Fact check

The claim: Ex-MSNBC host Keith Olbermann attacked female Supreme Court justices in profane post

A March 5 Facebook post (direct link, archive link) shows a screenshot of what appears to be a post on X, formerly Twitter, from former MSNBC commentator Keith Olbermann. It states, “liberal women are … useless” and attacks three female Supreme Court justices with the repeated use of a profanity.

“Yet, Keith Olbermann thinks President Trump is disrespectful towards women?” reads the post’s caption. “So, what we call this? Having a meltdown over the Supreme Court not allowing Democrats to weaponize our highest court, against a political opponent.”

Similar versions of the post received thousands of likes and were shared more than 300 times in four days, according to the social media analytics tool CrowdTangle.

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Our rating: False

Olbermann did not make the post attributed to him. The claim originated from a parody account that has since been deleted. The Facebook post does not mention the image's origin as a parody.

Claim originated on parody account

The claim’s roots trace to the Supreme Court’s unanimous March 4 decision that Colorado could not use an anti-insurrectionist provision of the Constitution to remove former President Donald Trump from the ballot. The high court’s three liberal justices – Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson – wrote a separate statement criticizing the majority but ultimately sided with Trump.

But the post in question isn't from Olbermann. While he did criticize that decision and call for the dissolution of the Supreme Court, Olbermann did not make the profanity-laden post attacking the justices. The screenshotted post does not appear anywhere in his official X feed, and the former MSNBC host confirmed to USA TODAY that he does not own the account that shared the original post.

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Before it was deleted, that account at first glance bore a strong resemblance to the one owned by Olbermann, leading some social media users to believe its messages were real. Its bio referenced being a “parody artist,” though the users sharing the screenshotted post make no mention of its origin as a parody.

The Facebook post is an example of what could be called "stolen satire," in which fabricated content originally written and presented as parody is captured and reposted in a way that makes it appear to be authentic. As a result, readers of the second-generation post are misled, which is what happened here.

USA TODAY has debunked several claims that center on social media users being duped by parody accounts, including false assertions that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez posted that “printing money is the only way out of inflation” and that President Joe Biden mocked Trump for an $83 million jury verdict levied against him.

USA TODAY reached out to several Facebook users who shared the post but did not immediately receive responses. The social media user who operated the parody account could not be reached.

Our fact-check sources:

• Keith Olbermann, March 7, Email exchange with USA TODAY

• Keith Olbermann, accessed March 8, X profile

• @OlbermannonX (Internet Archive), accessed March 7, X profile

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Profane post from parody account, not ex-MSNBC host | Fact check