Author who duped Greg Abbott with fake Garth Brooks story calls him ‘one of the dumbest people in the country’

Fake story author said he was ‘besides myself with joy’ when he saw the Texas governor’s tweet

Greg Abbott has been branded “one of the dumbest people in the country” by the author of a satirical story about country music star Garth Brooks that was reshared by the Texas governor.

Christopher Blair runs the parody website The Dunning-Kruger-Times, which posted the story that Mr Brooks had been booed off the stage at the 123rd Annual Texas Country Jamboree last month after calling his conservative fans “a**holes.”

The entire story was made-up - but Mr Abbott didn’t seem to notice.

“When I saw [Mr Abbott’s repost], I was besides myself with joy,” Mr Blair told The Guardian.

“He’s one of the dumbest people in the country.”

“As soon as I wrote the headline, I said to myself that it might be a little bit much,” Mr Blair said. “But it wasn’t.”

The Texas governor had tweeted a link to the story on 25 June with the caption: “Garth Brooks Booed Off Stage at 123rd Annual Texas Country Jamboree. Go woke. Go broke.”

“Garth called his conservative fans. ‘a**holes’ Good job Texas,” he added.

His tweet seemed to refer to a question-and-answer session with the country singer last month in which he said his new bar in Nashville planned to “serve every brand of beer,” shutting down the idea that it wouldn’t serve Bud Light, following the conservative-led boycott of the beer brand.

“Our thing is this: If you come into this house, love one another,” Mr Brooks said. “If you’re an a**hole, there are plenty of other places on lower Broadway to go.”

The governor has since deleted his tweet, but reactions to the tweet are still up.

Democratic Texas Congressman Greg Casar tweeted: “Gov Abbott just accidentally posted a satire article because he wants to hate on queer Texans and Garth Brooks so bad.”

“The Texas Country Jamboree doesn’t exist. Hambriston, Texas is not real. And the Governor is not fit to tweet, much less govern,” he explained.