During ongoing trucker-led protests, Fox News contributor Sara Carter has pulled back her entirely fictitious story about a woman dying after being crushed by a Canadian authority on horseback.
Despite the fact that the claim was false, the tweet caused outrage among her 1.3 million conservative Twitter followers, who quickly seized on the unfortunate death as evidence of Canadian government misconduct.
“Reports are the woman trampled by a Canadian horse patrol just died at the hospital … #Trudeau #FreedomConvoyCanada,” Carter tweeted Friday evening.
Conservatives, especially former Fox Nation hosts Diamond and Silk and Republican Senator Ted Cruz, quickly picked on and amplified the post (R-TX).
While cleaning up on Saturday morning, the Fox News contributor admitted her story was false.
“The Reports I was given earlier yesterday from sources on the ground that someone may have died at a hospital during the trampling was wrong,” she tweeted.
The Fox News contributor and frequent Sean Hannity enlisted field reporter added that “someone was taken to a hospital with a heart condition – not due to trampling. I want to clarify this again and apologize for any confusion.”
Carter did not respond to The Daily Beast‘s request for comment on Saturday evening, but the fictional tweet about the woman dying in the hospital was removed after the inquiry.
Canadian horseback riding officials are shown in video clips shared to Twitter attempting to disperse a mob of protesting truckers. Police officers’ actions led “Freedom Convoy” organizers to claim that their own activists were “horse-trampled” during the attempted dispersion.
That “horse-trampled” claim has since received substantial push back by the Ottawa Police, who wrote: “We hear your concern for people on the ground after the horses dispersed a crowd. Anyone who fell got up and walked away. We’re unaware of any injuries.”
Following Carter’s backtracking, Cruz has also since retracted his quote-retweet, writing: “I deleted my retweet about a Canadian protestor being trampled to death because the journalist who first reported it now says it was in error.”
Carter isn’t the first person to make a ridiculous claim and then back.
In March 2020, the Fox News host removed a bizarre tweet inviting her fans to video nearby hospitals because she was concerned that people weren’t getting sick in large numbers, resulting in crowded hospital rooms during a global pandemic.
