Horror writer Stephen King could not have been happy at all when he was forced to apologize for his recent tweet about Ron DeSantis that ended up being entirely fictional.
The left-wing novelist went out to his 6.7 million Twitter followers back on the 6th of July that the very popular governor of Florida had signed into law a new bill forcing the state’s students and professors to declare their political views with a state database. However, when people pointed out that it was an entirely false story from an old Salon article, King went forward to issue an apology and deleted his original tweet.
“I deleted a tweet about Ron DeSantis requiring notice of political views of students and teachers,” King stated in his response. “That really was fake news. Sorry.”
I deleted a tweet about Ron DeSantis requiring notice of political views of students and teachers. That really was fake news. Sorry.
— Stephen King (@StephenKing) July 9, 2022
Going against their normal tendency to crack down on posts that they claim are misinformation, Twitter oddly chose to do absolutely nothing for the many days that King had his post up before King chose to take it down. When the writer did issue his apology, he threw blame for the incident on his source in a statement made to CNN on the matter.
“I regret having posted the headline without being more confident the story was correct,” stated King, who had chosen to grab and run with an old falsified story with a post, reading “‘I. Can’t. Even.’ “Salon is usually more reliable. Twitter is a constant learning experience, and I will try to do better.”
The actual law from DeSantis’ desk, and that Salon brewed up their own story about, makes it a requirement for public colleges and universities across Florida to carry out an entirely voluntary yearly survey on the subject of “intellectual freedom and viewpoint diversity.”
One well-known left-wing fact-checking website that is run by Poynter Institute, Politifact, labeled the claim from King to be entirely misinformation.
“King claimed DeSantis signed a bill “requiring Florida students, professors to register political views with (the) state,” stated Politifact. “We rate King’s statement False.”
Salon just recently chose to fix their headline, which a fact-check from CNN also labeled as entirely false, this past week.
The now74-year-old author, who is quite well known for his extreme-left views, is a heavy user on Twitter. Earlier this year, he managed to get himself mocked quite heavily when he chose to claim in one post that Russian President Vladimir Putin had met his match in President Joe Biden, who he claimed to finally give due punishment to the Russian leader for invading Ukraine.
“Mr. Putin has made a serious miscalculation. He forgot he’s no longer dealing with Trump,” exclaimed King in his post.