A Newsweek story published Thursday insisted, again, that there was still a chance that 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton could be installed as president.
Despite being written by Newsweek's "breaking news reporter," the story was based off a Medium post by Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig written in October.
Lessig argued President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence could both resign if Trump was found guilty of colluding with Russia during the election. From there, Lessig insisted House Speaker Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) should appoint Clinton his vice president, and then simply resign.
"He should nominate the person defeated by the treason of his own party, and then step aside, and let her become the President," he argued.
In addition to the idea being fairly unlikely and dated, the Thursday story was unusual in that the outlet already covered the exact same Medium post when it was written three months earlier.
Newsweek was promptly mocked on Twitter by journalists who noted the scenario had basically no chance of actually happening.
the ultimate long game https://t.co/qQxq4gnkmT pic.twitter.com/uDMoLQ6lsD
— Sopan Deb (@SopanDeb) January 18, 2018
What's left of Newsweek is actively making people dumber and less informed and honestly should be unfollowed and shunned for this kind of behavior. https://t.co/mrOgI4UE4w
— Byron Tau (@ByronTau) January 18, 2018
Newsweek's business model at this point is to make stories go viral on lefty social media – regardless of truth. https://t.co/0izr9M6rIT
— andrew kaczynski (@KFILE) January 18, 2018
And WWI could still be avoided if they find a way to reanimate the corpse of Franz Ferdinand and also invent a giant gun magnet that sucks up all the guns and turns them into rainbows. https://t.co/sFwJxzeve2
— Alex Seitz-Wald (@aseitzwald) January 18, 2018
"Could", in a universe where Paul Ryan stepped aside to appoint Hillary Clinton. I can't say for sure, but in this universe, we may also have a really good non-fattening ice cream, so we should figure out how to get there. https://t.co/nBMSFMvZqb
— (((Megan McArdle))) (@asymmetricinfo) January 18, 2018
SPOILER: No, she could not. This is ridiculous. https://t.co/4WNoyNvoif
— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) January 18, 2018