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  • 2017-08-09 (xsd:date)
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  • Did John McCain Accidentally Vote 'No' on Affordable Care Act Repeal? (en)
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  • In July 2017, Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona) cast the decisive No vote to kill a bill that would have repealed key parts of the Affordable Care Act, also known as the ACA or Obamacare, seemingly stopping a years-long push to take down the health care law in its tracks. Not long after that, disreputable web sites with names like AmericanNews88 and Spinzon published stories, in extremely broken English, that reported Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona) had admitted that his no vote on repealing the Affordable Care Act had been nothing but an accident: These sites do not display disclaimers labeling their content as fiction, and in fact the name of at least one of them (AmericanNews88) is an overt nod to the white supremacist set. (H is the eighth letter in the alphabet, and 88 is shorthand for HH, which stands for Heil Hitler. It is frequently used in conjunction with the number 14, which is short for 14 words, which generally references a phrase coined by white nationalist and pyramid prophesier David Lane: We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White Children.). Both AmericanNews88 and Spinzon are in the ecosystem of news sites that frequently publish stories about former President Barack Obama and his family, as well touching on topics as diverse as the Clintons, migrants, and angry liberals. None of their stories appear to contain much truth, and some verge on outright slanderous. In the case of McCain's accidental no vote, the text is a nearly verbatim copy of a hoax story that was originally published by the entertainment web site EmpireNews.net on 29 July 2017. AmericanNews88 made a few changes, such as changing the word shocked to stunned, repeal to annul, and wave of new fans to flood of new fans, but the structure and sentiment of these two stories are otherwise identical. Empire News is a well-known fake news web site that has a long history of publishing misinformation. That web site, unlike the other tow, does have a disclaimer: However, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) truly did say that McCain's health may have been a contributing factor in the Senator's no vote: A spokesperson for McCain issued a statement in response to Johnson's remarks: (en)
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