CNN Debunks GOP Lawmaker’s Claim That Gun Tweets From Obama Supporters Are Fake
After one Republican member of Congress accused President Obama of employing “spambots” on Twitter to push his message on guns, CNN’s Lisa Sylvester set out Wednesday afternoon to find out whether the Obama administration’s virtual army of supporters on Twitter actually exist.
Shortly after the 2012 election ending, President Obama‘s massive grassroots organization re-branded and re-purposed itself as “Organizing for Action,” a non-profit group that aims to support the president’s legislative agenda. And one of their first orders of business has been to encourage supporters to tweet at their congresspeople demanding action on gun control.
Rep. Steve Stockman (R-TX), the same man who brought Ted Nugent with him to this month’s State of the Union, called on the president “to denounce this phony spam campaign.” He argued that of the 16 identical tweets he received as part of OFA’s #WeDemandAVote campaign, six were real and “the other 10 are fake, computer-generated spambots.”
Stockman told the CNN reporter Wednesday, “We’re calling for more information so we can find out exactly who sent the fake tweets out and why they’re sending them out, and exactly what they’re agenda is.”
Sylvester and her team at CNN did some investigating into the Twitter accounts Stockman is claiming are fake and managed to prove that just because someone is new to Twitter, with the egg avatar and very few followers, doesn’t mean they are not a real person. She even managed to get one of supposed “fake” tweeters on the phone. Vera Awah from Livingston, Texas, told CNN, “I think this is important, that’s why I decided to tweet my congressman… That was the first one I did. I’ve never done tweets before.”
As Organizing for Action’s Ben LaBolt explained to Sylvester, it makes sense that many of the people tweeting on behalf of the group would be new to Twitter since their aim is get people involved in politics in new ways.
As for Vera Awah, while she had only one follower when she first sent the message to Rep. Stockman on February 22nd, after her Twitter handle appeared on CNN this afternoon, she’s up to seven.
Watch video below, via CNN:
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