People Are Sharing A Fake Article That Says The Canadian Government Bought A George W. Bush Painting

Satirical news strikes again.

Last year former President George W. Bush unveiled a series of paintings of world leaders. Our own Stephen Harper was painted. Here he is.

AP Photo/Benny Snyder

And here's a story published yesterday by The Lapine, a satirical Canadian website. Satirical as in not true and meant to be funny. Like The Onion.

thelapine.ca

Real painting, fake story. The portrait of Harper did not sell for close to $2 million in Canadian dollars. (And no, Bush does not do finger paintings.)

But in a strange example of the tail wagging the dog, one claim made by The Lapine has been proven true.

The story says that "Canadians are storming Twitter in outrage after George W. Bush let it slip today that he has sold his portrait of Prime Minister Stephen Harper to the Canadian Government for an eye-popping $1.5 million."

Thanks to the fake news article, people have indeed taken to Twitter to talk about this story. See how they did that?

Jim O'Leary @jim_oleary

WTF? Dear Leader spent $2m of OUR money on this?? George Bush @pmHarper Painting sold to Canada for $1.5mUS http://t.co/CezGsfgRno #cdnpoli

12:51 AM - 09 Jul 2015

OccupyEdmonton @OccupyYEG

Canadians only learned late last night of the Harper government buying the Harper painting for what art critics... http://t.co/bRqc1r5Hbg

03:33 AM - 09 Jul 2015

Sierra Steele @SierraSteal

@VanObserver wonder if @pmharper was touring with his new painting sold to Canada for $1.5mUS http://t.co/OHhNCpVP7A #wtf #cdnpoli fire him

02:10 AM - 09 Jul 2015

Amanda @Anudda

FFS MT @TheLapine: GWBush finger-painting of Harper sells to Harper Gov for $1.5 million US http://t.co/E7EAE9ZmIZ…

12:50 AM - 09 Jul 2015

GT Harris @HarrisGT

Really???? Our hard earned money is going where??? Ridiculous! http://t.co/Ykgyf6NwVX

04:51 PM - 08 Jul 2015

Aditya आदित्य @BondAdit

I just realised that the Canadian PM is a bigger megalomaniac than fascist #Modi! And way more stupid! But these... http://t.co/ZIfjmRKbTb

05:51 PM - 08 Jul 2015

Baljinder Boora @balboora

Why is Harper wasting money on such useless things? Is that part of his mandate to waste tax dollars? http://t.co/wjzzjkjHD9

06:32 PM - 08 Jul 2015

This guy took the satire up a notch by working in fired CBC host/art dealer Evan Solomon.

Mike Spry @mdspry

George Bush finger-painting of @pmharper sells to government for $1.5M. Evan Solomon gets 11% commission. http://t.co/NTB7j3gLWp

07:26 PM - 08 Jul 2015

Respect.

But the real place where it is taking hold is Facebook. The story has generated over 7,000 likes, shares and comments on the platform.

thelapine.ca

The story is a nice hit for the site after a just day of being online.

But it's not yet of the scale of its December post claiming that Burger King, which owns Tim Horton's, had decided to kill the Timbit. That has racked up close to 120,000 Facebook interactions to date.

Follow @BuzzFeedCanada