As the saying goes, there’s always a tweet. But in this case, there’s not.
A tweet that appeared to show Donald Trump arguing the president should be shot out of a cannon into the sun if the “Dow Joans” drops precipitously is not real, but that didn’t stop users from sharing it tens of thousands of times. (One tipoff: It’s actually the “Dow Jones.”)
Shaun Usher, founder of a British website called Letters of Note, shared the fake tweet as a joke Monday when the stock market dropped dramatically.
The fake tweet had all the hallmarks of a veritable internet phenomenon over the past year: an old tweet from Trump’s account that resurfaces awkwardly when it appears to comment on current events. It helped that Usher is known for publicizing old correspondence on his site.
And in this case, there were plenty of real examples, including Trump criticizing President Obama for dips in the stock market and bragging about previous highs in the stock market while he was president. He even bragged that the stock market went up before he was president.
For his part, Usher was remorseful for spreading a fake tweet, although he did not delete it.
Get our Politics Newsletter. The headlines out of Washington never seem to slow. Subscribe to The D.C. Brief to make sense of what matters most.
