Fact Check

Loretta Lynn Death Hoax (2018)

Contrary to a false report circulating in 2018, country singer Loretta Lynn did not die after checking into hospice care.

Published Dec. 31, 2018

Updated Oct. 4, 2022
Claim:
Country singer Loretta Lynn passed away in December 2018 and left behind a pro-Trump note for her fans.

Origin

On Dec. 30, 2018, the America's Last Line of Defense website published an article reporting that country music star Loretta Lynn had passed away and left behind a pro-Trump message for her fans noting that she had donated her entire estate to Trump's 2020 re-election campaign:

Loretta Lynn checked into hospice yesterday looking to spend the last month or two of her life enjoying life on a morphine drip. Unfortunately, this morning, she passed away in her bed with a smile on her 93-year-old face and a note to her fans at her side. The note said:

“Dear fans, I’m dying. I wouldn’t be so okay with it if our President was anyone but the wonderful Donald Trump. Please support him in the next election.”

Loretta has also donated her entire estate to the MAGA 2020 campaign, and urges everyone else to do the same.

This account was completely false, as is everything published by America's Last Line of Defense. Lynn (who, as of this writing, is actually 86 years old) had been briefly hospitalized a few months earlier but was still alive -- and up for a Grammy award -- at the time of publication.

America's Last Line of Defense is part of a network of junk news sites that engages in political trolling under the guise of proffering "satire."

Update: Loretta Lynn died at the age of 90 on Oct. 4, 2022.

Updates

Update [Oct. 4, 2022]: Revised to report that Loretta Lynn died on Oct. 4, 2022.

David Mikkelson founded the site now known as snopes.com back in 1994.