President Donald Trump has railed against fake news, but retweeted a fake supporter.
On Saturday afternoon, Trump offered his thanks on Twitter to a young African-American woman whose account praised the president for “working hard for the American people.” She appeared to defy the trend of Trump polling poorly with young women and African-Americans.
But Twitter snoopers — including Emmy-winning Hollywood writer-producer Robert Schooley, who specializes in children’s programming — uncovered strange inconsistencies in Mincey’s account.
When Trump retweeted the account on Saturday, the handle was @ProTrump45. It purportedly belonged to “Nicole Mincy,” a New Jersey college student:
Thank you Nicole! https://t.co/KlWN05uFOx
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 5, 2017
But Heavy.com said it reached out to her and that she said her identity was stolen to start a GoFundMe account and several online stores selling Trump merchandise. The picture used by the account at the time of Trump’s retweet was not of Mincy, but of a model from a stock agency, Heavy reported.
The GoFundMe page and several of the stores have since been shut down, though at least one store still appears to be running.
After Schooley and others raised questions about the Twitter account, someone changed the name, photo and handle.
But “Nicole Mincy” may have an even more complicated online history.
In June, The Daily Caller ran a sponsored post about Nicole Mincey — note the extra “e” — which described her as “an African American female from Camden, NJ [who] grew up in poverty” but, thanks in part to her “hardline conservative” mom, had become “a college student and owner of ProTrump45, a pro-Trump empire.” (The post was an ad and was not part of the Daily Caller’s editorial department, Caller editor-in- chief Geoffrey Ingersoll told TheWrap.)
Schooley said the sponsored post held deals about Mincey also contained in a now-deleted Medium post with the byline Kendra Manning. “Manning” has a Twitter page with another model’s picture, and she has tweeted at the “Nicole Mincey” Twitter page, according to Heavy.
Schooley also found that the Mincey account is connected to dozens of Twitter accounts which only tweet pro-Trump memes and share similar traits to the “Mincey” account.
Are Mincy/Mincey and Manning bots? Bots are defined as computer programs with very specific functions, such as tweeting about a particular subject. Or could they be the work of a person using false names?
Twitter has deleted Mincy’s profile, but did not immediately respond to TheWrap’s request for comment on why.
Trump, meanwhile, has not deleted her tweet.
Or its tweet. Whatever the case may be.
The whole fake supporter thing is bad enough, but "black liberal woman for Trump" is just combining his lowest polling demographics.
— Schooley (@Rschooley) August 7, 2017
Something’s a bit odd about her bio shot. pic.twitter.com/AYJtiiUNCY
— Schooley (@Rschooley) August 6, 2017
Never let it be said that Trump doesn’t have diverse fictional followers. pic.twitter.com/qbt7UdmOpK
— Schooley (@Rschooley) August 6, 2017