“Awesome,” Democrat U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) replied Monday to a fake news report that “at least 26 Iranian shadow fleet vessels” successfully bypassed the United States’ blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.
The U.S. Senator cheered the anti-America report on X.com in response to a post by Georgetown Adjunct Professor and Iran Project Director and Senior Adviser at the International Crisis Group Ali Vaez, a critic of President Donald Trump.
Vaez’s post shares a story published by Lloyd’s List titled “At least 26 Iranian shadow fleet vessels bypass US blockade” and claiming that there has been “a steady flow of shadow fleet traffic in and out of the Middle East Gulf” during the U.S. blockade – prompting the Connecticut Democrat senator’s “awesome” reply.
On Tuesday, however, Fox News Chief Foreign Correspondent Trey Yingst confirmed that the claim Sen. Murphy cheered was false and that there is no evidence any vessels had left Iranian ports or moved through the Strait of Hormuz.
“Yes, absolutely,” Yingst reported when asked if the Lloyd’s List article “was just Iranian propaganda” during an interview on Fox and Friends.
Sen. Murphy hasn’t just cheered a fake report of U.S. failure. He’s also denounced news of a U.S. success.
On Sunday, Pres. Trump announced that the U.S. had successfully stopped an Iranian-flagged cargo ship from violating the blockade, prompting Murphy to reply by calling the U.S. Navy’s efforts “feckless”:
“We are spending billions to keep our entire navy in the Strait to fecklessly fail to open a waterway that wasn’t closed until Trump’s pointless war of choice closed it.”
And, in an April 15 post, Sen. Murphy called Trump’s blockade “insane” and accused the president of “helping the Iranians close the Strait of Hormuz” and “trying to open the Strait of Hormuz by helping the Iranians close it.”
“So that was just Iranian propaganda?”
— Fox News (@FoxNews) April 21, 2026
“Yes, absolutely.”@TreyYingst reports there’s no evidence any vessels left Iranian ports or moved through the Strait of Hormuz — undercutting the false narrative about 26 Iranian ships slipping past a U.S. blockade. | @foxandfriends pic.twitter.com/jnUB9yoSFK
UPDATE: Reaction to Sen. Murphy's X.com post has been overwhelmingly negative and severe. In response, Murphy criticized “Twitter” for failing to recognize obvious “sarcasm” and forcing him to “clarify” his comment.
And, in an interview with Fox News, Murphy called “Twitter” a “cesspool” and said “Sarcasm is not something, I guess, that’s allowed on Twitter anymore.”
For their part, X.com users aren’t buying Murphy’s claim he was being sarcastic. Some informed him that Twitter is now named X.com.
Radio host Dana Loesch replied by telling Murphy that he was not being sarcastic, calling his claim a cop-out.
Mollie Hemingway, editor-in-chief of The Federalist, replied by recalling the time Sen. Murphy “held secret meeting in Munich with Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif.” “A reminder of what I exclusively reported in 2020. You later admitted my reporting was correct,” Hemingway told Murphy in her post.
