President Donald Trump started his Friday with two tweets where he exhorted Democrats and Republicans to work together on certain issues, including funding for his planned U.S.-Mexico border wall. While he wanted to tag Senators Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer in his second tweet, which focused on criminal justice reform, the president ended up mistakenly tagging a Twitter account belonging to a fan of the Senate minority leader.
In his first Twitter post from Friday morning, Trump encouraged bipartisan support for a “major border security package, which will include funding for the [border] wall.” The Washington Post noted that Trump went ahead with this tweet despite how Democrats, who gained control of the House of Representatives in the recent midterm elections, have largely been opposed to the idea of a border wall.
As pointed out by the Washington Post , it was in the second tweet where Donald Trump committed his blunder, as he talked about how Democrats and Republicans could also work together to make criminal justice reform happen. In this tweet, he tagged accounts which he thought belonged to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Democratic Party leader Chuck Schumer, doing so correctly with McConnell’s verified Twitter account, but somehow tagging a Schumer fan account instead of the official one.
“Really good Criminal Justice Reform has a true shot at major bipartisan support. @senatemajldr Mitch McConnell and @senchuckschumer have a real chance to do something so badly needed in our country. Already past [sic], with big vote, in House. Would be a major victory for ALL!”
The House & @POTUS support our bipartisan legislation to reduce mass incarceration, empower formerly-incarcerated individuals, improve public safety & reduce recidivism. It’s time for the Senate to act & pass the #FirstStepAct now. https://t.co/jhAFvaD0PY
— Former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (@TulsiPress) November 15, 2018
The fan account mistakenly tagged by Trump has only 168 tweets and 402 followers with intermittent activity, as opposed to Chuck Schumer’s verified account, which has over 14,200 tweets and 1.5 million followers and is regularly updated.
As seen in the replies to Donald Trump’s criminal justice reform tweet, many users similarly noticed how the president tagged a “fake” Schumer account instead of his verified account, with one user , in particular, questioning why Trump kept the tweet up despite the error. Others took issue with Trump’s usage of the word “past” instead of “passed” when referring to legislation, with some users referencing times when the president misused or misspelled certain words in his Twitter posts.
The above gaffe marked the most recent example of Donald Trump tagging the wrong Twitter account when trying to address a public figure on social media. Almost one year ago to this day, Mashable reported on how the president fired back at U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May for comments she made about his sharing of anti-Muslim propaganda on Twitter, only for him to tag the “@theresamay” account, which actually belongs to a woman named Theresa Scrivener. As noted by the publication, Scrivener had only six followers at the time of the incident, and promptly set her account to private soon after she was erroneously tagged.
