Wow, what a story from the New York Times' Jack Nicas [@jacknicas]. "Remember when Trump fell for a fake account posing as his sister? (If not: He did.) Well, I figured out who was behind it: a 21-year-old DoorDash driver and Trump supporter in Mechanicsburg, Penn. And hoo boy, it's quite a tale." Go read the whole thing.
Here's a snip from the top, I don't want to give away the good stuff:
Last month, between tweets disputing his election loss, President Trump posted an article from a conservative website that said his sister Elizabeth Trump Grau had just joined Twitter to publicly back her brother's fight to overturn the vote.
"Thank you Elizabeth," Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter. "LOVE!"
But the Twitter account that prompted the article was not his sister's. It was a fake profile run by Josh Hall, a 21-year-old food-delivery driver in Mechanicsburg, Pa.
"I was like, 'Oh, my goodness. He actually thinks it's his sister,'" Mr. Hall, a fervent Trump supporter, said in an interview last week.
It was a surreal coda to nearly a year of deception for Mr. Hall. Since February, he had posed as political figures and their families on Twitter, including five of the president's relatives. He had pretended to be Robert Trump, the president's brother; Barron Trump, the president's 14-year-old son; and Dr. Deborah L. Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator. The accounts collectively amassed more than 160,000 followers.
NYT: He Pretended to Be Trump's Family. Then Trump Fell for It.
