No, Donald Trump Isn’t Turning USS Enterprise Into a Riverboat Casino

Posted on: November 20, 2016, 11:00h. 

Last updated on: November 19, 2016, 10:52h.

Casino.org Staff Writer Read More

Expertise: Commercial Gaming.

Donald Trump isn’t going to turn the USS Enterprise into a floating riverboat casino. To those who find that revelation surprising, the use of more reliable news sources might be needed.

This week Duffel Blog, an American satire fake news website, published an article that claimed President-elect Trump was planning to turn the USS Enterprise into a gold-plated floating casino cruise ship. And like so many bogus “news” stories this year, some fell for the gag.

“The USS Trump is going to be best cruise ship in the world,” Duffel Blog claimed Trump said in a statement. “Second to none. Completely remodeled. You’ll be so proud. It’s going to have the best people. We’re going to make this aircraft carrier great again. Revenue from the Trump will go directly to paying down the national debt.”

One of only three Navy vessels commissioned before World War II to survive the war, the USS Enterprise is the most decorated ship from WWII. In addition to refurbishing the aircraft carrier into a casino, Duffel Blog claimed guests could “try their hand at operating a nuclear reactor,” and “fire off a Rim-7 Sea Sparrow missile for a small charge.”

You just can’t make this stuff up. Or, maybe you can.

Often referred to as the military version of “The Onion,” the most famous online satirical publication, Duffel Blog readers visit the site for humorous takes on military-related factual news. But when the Enterprise casino piece went viral, casual readers took the bait.

Fake News, Real Problem

Google, Twitter, and Facebook all announced this week that they’re going to try and eliminate fake news from their platforms.

“Moving forward, we will restrict ad serving on pages that misrepresent, misstate, or conceal information about the publisher, the publisher’s content, or the primary purpose of the web property,” Google said in a statement.

BuzzFeed News analysis concluded that viral fake news outperformed real news on social media in the final months of the US election between Trump and Hillary Clinton.

BuzzFeed found that the top 20 fake election stories generated a total of 8.7 million shares, reactions, and comments on Facebook. The top 20 stories from credible news agencies produced 7.3 million impressions.

Election No Hoax

Some believe fake news influenced the outcome of the presidential election, but that’s a notion Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg denies. “If you believe that, then I don’t think you have internalized the message the Trump supporters are trying to send in this election,” Zuckerberg opined.

Meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel this week in Berlin, President Barack Obama addressed the severity of news hoaxes, but added that censorship isn’t in America’s best interests.

“If we are not serious about facts and what’s true and what’s not, and particularly in an age of social media where so many people are getting their information in sound bites and snippets off their phones, if we can’t discriminate between serious arguments and propaganda, then we have problems,” Obama said.

In other news this week, Russia hijacked the US election, Clinton sold weapons to ISIS, and RuPaul has revealed he was groped by Trump.