A viral claim circulating online alleges that six supporters of the “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) movement in Louisiana have initiated a hunger strike. The reported goal of this strike is to pressure writer E. Jean Carroll into returning the $5.6 million awarded to her following a sexual abuse and defamation lawsuit against former U.S. President Donald Trump. The claim suggests these individuals are prepared to “starve to death” until the payment is returned.
However, this story is not factual. The claim originated from The Halfway Post, a publication that identifies itself as satirical. If such a hunger strike were actually underway, it would have garnered significant attention from established news media outlets, which would be readily discoverable through searches on major platforms like Bing, DuckDuckGo, Google, and Yahoo. The absence of any such coverage confirms the fabricated nature of the report.
Dash McIntyre, the owner of The Halfway Post, published this fabricated story on July 14th across various social media platforms. The bio for The Halfway Post’s X (formerly Twitter) account explicitly states that the content is “Dadaist graffiti news,” and that the creator “don’t report the facts, I improve them.” McIntyre has previously described his work as “comedic catharsis for liberals who briefly fall for the Dadaist headlines before recognizing that the punchline is how nearly imperceptible the brazen fictional absurdity is from the absurdity of reality in contemporary politics.”
E. Jean Carroll was awarded $5 million in 2023 by a jury in her sexual abuse and defamation lawsuit against Donald Trump, with the payment, including interest, being received on July 13, 2026. The jury concluded that Trump had sexually abused Carroll in a New York department store in 1996 and later defamed her when she discussed the assault in her 2019 memoir. Trump has consistently denied these allegations. Additionally, in 2024, another jury awarded Carroll $83.3 million in a separate defamation case related to Trump’s continued remarks about her. This latter judgment was upheld by a federal appeals court in 2025.
This is not the first instance of a fabricated hunger strike rumor involving “MAGA fans.” Previously, a similar false claim circulated regarding “MAGA fans” in Montana vowing a hunger strike until Democrats stopped referring to Donald Trump and JD Vance as “weird.”
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