Where does President Donald Trump gets his information about illegal voting? Here’s one possibility.

Early last fall, when Trump started saying he feared the election would be rigged, recent Davidson College grad Cameron Harris decided to post a story to support Trump’s theory. Relying purely on his imagination, Harris made up a story about a man named Randall Prince stumbling across a shocking discovery. The headline read: “Breaking: ‘Tens of thousands’ of fraudulent Clinton votes found in Ohio warehouse.”

That’s what you call click bait — and a lie.

Harris, featured last week in The Charlotte Observer, said he was acting on a theory: “Given the severe distrust of the media among Trump supporters, anything that parroted Trump’s talking points, people would click. … People were predisposed to believe Hillary Clinton could not win except by cheating.”

Harris’ theory held up. He posted the fake story on Sept. 30. Within a few days, the clicks earned him about $5,000 through Google ads on his website. Eventually, the story was shared some 6 million times.

The story was completely false —no warehouse, no Randall Prince, no fraudulent votes. As Winston Churchill said, though, a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on — in this case, 6 million times over.

President Trump asserted to congressional leaders once again Monday that he would have won the popular vote if there had not been millions of illegal votes cast. Trump offers no proof of these illegal ballots, but if he repeats the line often enough, people will believe him.

Are we really so gullible? Shouldn’t the president of the United States be held accountable for such a claim? Especially a president known for huge exaggeration.

The popular vote is not the story of the week. Trump is making headlines for everything from reviving pipelines to withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Reams could be written about what he has done just in his first few days in office.

Yet we cannot let unfounded claims slip into our subconscious unchallenged. Remember the Cameron Harrises of the world — people who populate the web with fiction disguised as news. They exploit the public’s trust for financial gain, political power and the thrill of deceit. Ronald Reagan said trust but verify. When it comes to claims on the web, we should distrust and verify.