| September 17, 2017 started like any other day for the almost inhumanly prolific pro-Trump Twitter account. @Team_Trump45 posted a meme depicting Hillary Clinton, splayed out on the ground, saying "Help! I've lost and I can't shut up!" Then the account shared another Clinton meme, showing the cover of her book What Happened alongside a phony cover featuring President Donald Trump and the title I Happened. Soon after, @Team_Trump45 turned abruptly personal, posting about their "daughter" Nicky. "Well her temperature is going up fast 102-104," the tweet said. "We gotta go to the hospital." Next the account posted three pro-Trump memes in three minutes, followed several hours later by a "Trump Train" meme. As Max Kutner writes on Backchannel this week, those last four posts attracted the attention of Trump, who retweeted them to his 38 million followers. This was the same day that the president posted a tweet referring to Kim Jong-un as "Rocket Man" and a GIF depicting Trump hitting Clinton with a golf ball. The day of controversial tweets earned the president headlines. The New York Times referred to @Team_Trump45 as one of the president's "fans." @Team_Trump45 must have been elated, though not surprised; it wasn't the first time Trump had retweeted the account, but it made the nonstop posting about the president worth it. Millions would see @Team_Trump45's tweets, and they would even live on in the presidential record. The question was, what did the account want with all the exposure? The account posted constantly, almost always pro-Trump tweets, but the rest were about Nicky. In May 2017, the account had first shared a link to a GoFundMe campaign to "help Nicky fight her battle with cancer." One user who learned of @Team_Trump45 from the president's retweets clicked on the profile and began to investigate. The more they saw about requests for donations, the more suspicious they became. To this person, it seemed odd that the parent of a sick girl would spend so much time tweeting memes. Who was behind @Team_Trump45? Was @Team_Trump45 a scam, looking to profit from a sad story? Was it a Russian operative? A cadre of anti-Trump Twitter sleuths set to work, ferreting out the account owner's identity, unearthing his shady past, and sabotaging @Team_Trump45's fundraising attempts on multiple platforms. But what about "Nicky"? A Twitter troll with a shady background could also have a daughter with cancer who needs money for care. She may be collateral damage of yet another battle in the disinformation age. Jon J. Eilenberg | Articles Editor, WIRED |
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