Fact Check

Did the Trump Organization Win a Lucrative Contract to Rebuild a Syrian Airport?

A fake news article reported that the private real estate company had won a lucrative contract to rebuild a military airfield that had been bombed by the United States.

Published April 10, 2017

 (Shutterstock)
Image Via Shutterstock
Claim:
The Trump Organization won a contract to rebuild the Syrian airport destroyed in a United States missile attack.

In April 2017, not long after a Syrian military airfield was bombed by the United States, the entertainment web site Breaking Burgh published a hoax news article reporting that the Trump Organization (Donald Trump's privately owned development and real estate company) had won a lucrative contract to rebuild it:

Donald Trump Jr, eldest son of the President and trustee of his business empire, has announced that the Trump Organization has won a lucrative contract to refurbish an airport in the Middle East. He was quick to emphasize this was done without the involvement of the White House.

“I can state with one-hundred percent certainty that my father played no role in the negotiation of this contract which was conducted solely by me over the past 24 hours.”

The airport, called the Shayrat airbase near the Syrian city of Homs, primarily plays host to a domestic carrier called the 50th Air Brigade. Though still a functioning airport, a number of buildings had fallen into disrepair over the course of the past 72 hours.

This is not a genuine news article; it is actually a piece of satire from Breaking Burgh, a web site that identifies itself as a satire blog in its tagline on the front page ("A Satirical Blog Serving Western Pennsylvania and Beyond") as well as on its "About" page:

Welcome to Breaking Burgh, a satirical blog serving Western Pennsylvania and beyond.

In case you read that too quickly, it’s SATIRE, so put that lawyer back in your pocket.

This is not the first piece of misinformation to circulate in the wake of the missile strike against Syria in April 2017.  A rumor circulated that the White House had announced that the attack was simply a publicity stunt (which was false), and another claimed that President Trump owned stock in Raytheon, the company that produced the missiles used in the attack, and personally profited from the incident (which we rated unproven).

Dan Evon is a former writer for Snopes.