Fake news.

The Washington Post on Tuesday night posted a story about President Trump. “In unprecedented move, Treasury orders Trump’s name printed on stimulus checks,” said the headline.

The piece included a damaging allegation — once again by unnamed officials — saying a team of Internal Revenue Service “is now racing to implement a programming change that two senior IRS officials said will probably lead to a delay in issuing the first batch of paper checks. They are scheduled to be sent Thursday to the Bureau of the Fiscal Service for printing and issuing.”

Then The Daily Mail picked it up, morphing the story into this headline: “Stimulus checks worth $1,200 for every American have been ‘delayed for days because Donald Trump demanded the IRS print his name on them after being told he was not allowed to sign them.”

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Within hours, the story was all over the mainstream media, with the liberal news networks airing it repeatedly.

Except it isn’t true.

“Economic Impact Payment checks are scheduled to go out on time and exactly as planned — there is absolutely no delay whatsoever,” a Treasury Department spokesman said in a statement to NBC News. “In fact, we expect the first checks to be in the mail early next week which is well in advance of when the first checks went out in 2008 and well in advance of initial estimates.”

The spokesman said Treasury and IRS officials “have worked around the clock to get fast and direct economic assistance to hardworking Americans” and said the quick turnaround was a “major achievement.”

But that little pesky “fact” didn’t get much airtime. And by Wednesday morning, liberals were apoplectic over the move.

“You are getting your money late because the President thinks it is more important that his name be on the check than that you are able to pay your bills on time,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) wrote on Twitter.

That’s how fake news is created.