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Fake social media accounts use Trump as signifier for trash talk

A twitter post, reposted on the Facebook page RADIO BIAFRA LONDON, claims that President of the United States, Donald Trump, called Kenya Corrupt and Nigeria the devil. 

FALSE. The said twitter account is fake and not the real account of the president of the United States.

Full Text

A Facebook user, Okeke Nelson, on the Radio Biafra London page, put up a twitter post alleged to be from the President of the United States, Donald Trump.

The post reads, “I said KENYA is a very corrupt country in AFRICA and left out NIGERIA because when you are counting evil people, you don’t count the DEVIL.” 

The post which came live on Twitter on August 21, garnered over 350 retweets, 1700 likes and many comments. While that on the Facebook page – Radio Biafra London has garnered over 1,200 likes as of Tuesday.

The Twitter account has 1,414 followers while the Facebook page radio Biafra London has 1.5 million members 

While few persons are aware the said account is fake, many others fell for the parody account according to the following comments: 

Verification

A close look at the twitter handle of the posted account shows it is a fake account, because the original twitter handle of President Donald Trump is verified. However, the said fake account is unverified.  A search on twXplorer directed the post to an account named @Trump_Donald01. This further exposed the deceptive account because the real account of the US president is @realDonaldTrump and not @Trump_Donald01.

A further search revealed that the owner of the account has now changed the name of the account to THE REALEST but various comments on the said post tagging @Trump_Donald01 still redirected the researcher back to THE REALEST.  The name change of the parody account happened not long after the tweet went viral.

To avoid such deception, Dubawa has re-presented below the original account of the president of the United States, the marked area shows the account as verified. 

Conclusion

The post is false and cannot be attributed to the president of the United States since no evidence supports the claim. It is a fake account intended to mislead and misinform the public. 

The researcher produced this fact-check per the Dubawa 2020 Fellowship partnership with Sparkling 92.3 FM to facilitate the ethos of “truth” in journalism and enhance media literacy in the country.

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