Does Donald Trump write all of his own tweets?
Some people have suggested he doesn’t, after what looks like a White House staffer’s social media mistake.
Earlier, Donald Trump tweeted out the following message to his 40 million Twitter followers, very much in his usual style.
The @NBCNews story has just been totally refuted by Sec. Tillerson and @VP Pence. It is #FakeNews. They should issue an apology to AMERICA!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 4, 2017
However, people spotted that Dan Scavino, the president’s director of social media (and assistant, according to his Twitter bio), tweeted out exactly the same thing almost simultaneously.
Oops.
I don't think Trump did this tweet pic.twitter.com/HXZHPr6Nls
— Joe Perticone (@JoePerticone) October 4, 2017
Anyone who runs multiple accounts might recognise the mistake – which can happen when using a social media dashboard like Tweetdeck, that lets you tweet from different accounts.
my man dan scavino getting sloppy over here pic.twitter.com/jgCgdZPfmn
— Ashley Feinberg (@ashleyfeinberg) October 4, 2017
But some people weren’t that shocked, and said there were certain things about the tweet that made it sound less like the president himself.
The use of hashtags is usually a tell that Scavino is at the steering wheel https://t.co/5akXetW3Hw
— Abby D. Phillip (@abbydphillip) October 4, 2017
Scavino hastily deleted his own tweet, and instead re-tweeted the Donald Trump version.
But this does seem to show that even the president’s more dramatic tweets, with exclamation marks, words in caps, and talk of “fake news”, aren’t necessarily composed by his own fair hand.
And this isn’t Scavino’s first social media blunder.
Last month, he tweeted out a video he said was of Hurricane Irma at Miami airport, only to be corrected by the airport itself.
This video is not from Miami International Airport.
— Miami Int'l Airport (@iflymia) September 10, 2017