Wagner and Twitter Blue Checks Fall for Fake Trump Statement Claiming His Account Will Be Reinstated After Musk Takeover
MSNBC was duped into repeating a hoax statement from former President Donald Trump, which said his Twitter account would be reactivated by Monday.
Just after 10 p.m. ET Thursday, a statement that pretty well matched the tone and tenor of the former president began to circulate across the platform in the hours after it was officially acquired by Elon Musk.
The statement was shared by Alex Wagner on her eponymous MSNBC show. It read:
Congratulations to Elon Musk on his purchase of Twitter. Many people are saying that change was needed, as the old management was too concerned with the woke agenda. I have been told that my account will be back up and running on Monday – we will see. Happy to be able to engage with an African-American owned business!
The show quickly apologized for sharing the fake quote:
Others also fell for the hoax on Twitter, and many more deleted their posts before Mediaite could save copies of them:
Dinesh D’Souza was duped by a fake Trump press release. pic.twitter.com/c49e7pllE6
— Zachary Petrizzo (@ZTPetrizzo) October 28, 2022
Tweet retracted. No statement from Donald Trump on Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter has been released. This was a fake statement circulating. Error regretted. pic.twitter.com/PkLm6UtqRj
— ANI (@ANI) October 28, 2022
This was a fake statement which has now been deleted. pic.twitter.com/c9q3RveQov
— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) October 28, 2022
Kash Patel, former chief of staff to the Acting United States Secretary of Defense under Trump, is promoting the fake statement on Truth Social.
Meanwhile, Devin Nunes, CEO at the Trump Media & Technology Group, is blaming the screenshot on the ‘left-wing.’ pic.twitter.com/ptaKUbiTXW
— Mikael Thalen (@MikaelThalen) October 28, 2022
Trump said earlier this year he would never return, even after Musk’s expressed interest in purchasing Twitter and floated the idea of reinstating Trump’s account.
“I am not going on Twitter, I am going to stay on Truth,” Trump told Fox News. “I hope Elon buys Twitter because he’ll make improvements to it and he is a good man, but I am going to be staying on Truth. The bottom line is, no, I am not going back to Twitter.”
“I do think it was not correct to ban Donald Trump I think that was a mistake… It alienated a large part of the country and did not ultimately result in Donald Trump not having a voice,” Musk said in May.
Watch above, via MSNBC.
