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Image Source: Getty [1]
Another day, another opportunity for Donald Trump drama. The GOP presidential candidate won the Nevada caucus on Tuesday [2] and captured a large percentage of the Latino vote. That night, something funny happened — several accounts with typical Latino names started tweeting the same thing. "Trump won around 40% of the latino vote in Nevada, but that accounts for about 1,300 votes. Still, more than the two hispanics on the ballot," was the text, referring to Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz as the other two Hispanics.
Niraj Warikoo, a reporter for the Detroit Free Press, took a screenshot of the identical tweets.
It appears Trump campaign created spam accounts with Latino names who all tweeted exact same thing in past 2 minutes pic.twitter.com/wHacPOK3qM [3]
— Niraj Warikoo (@nwarikoo) February 24, 2016 [4]
He noticed other tweets from the same accounts had the same wording.
If you click on the individual accounts, their other recent tweets are also exactly worded, meaning it's spam generated to hype up Trump.
— Niraj Warikoo (@nwarikoo) February 24, 2016 [5]
The timing was curious.
These tweets all came shortly after Trump won in Nevada last night, apparently a way to convince the public that Hispanics like Trump.
— Niraj Warikoo (@nwarikoo) February 24, 2016 [6]
Looks like the original tweet came from Univision journalist Enrique Acevedo (indeed, he did tweet that message [7]).
It appears the text of the spam tweets on Trump was copied from tweet at 12:21 am EST by journalist with Univision: pic.twitter.com/sEx36J2fNg [8]
— Niraj Warikoo (@nwarikoo) February 24, 2016 [9]
In the likely event that the tweets are fake, who came up with those names and where did the profile pictures come from?
Few minutes later, a spam account tweeted same, and then at 12:57 came several more with same words and Latino names pic.twitter.com/Bi4xp0PGar [10]
— Niraj Warikoo (@nwarikoo) February 24, 2016 [11]
All the tweets from that night captured by Warikoo have since been deleted.
One way to tell they're fake is they all tweeted after the same Trump tweet a tweet that said the exact same thing: pic.twitter.com/WL3h7xeguD [12]
— Niraj Warikoo (@nwarikoo) February 24, 2016 [13]
Although Warikoo says the Trump campaign is behind this, that hasn't been confirmed. "There is only one account that matters — @realdonaldtrump. There are no other accounts the campaign is aware of," a Trump spokesperson told Forbes as a response [14] to the accusation. We have also reached out to the campaign and will update this story if we hear back.