Trump shares fake story from satire website to criticize Twitter

President Trump on Friday tweeted out a fake story Friday from a satirical website attacking Twitter, with commentary suggesting he was not aware the piece was satire.

The president shared a link from The Babylon Bee, a conservative satire website, that mockingly wrote a story that Twitter had crashed on Thursday to slow the spread of negative news stories about Democratic nominee Joe Biden.

“Wow, this has never been done in history. This includes his really bad interview last night. Why is Twitter doing this. Bringing more attention to Sleepy Joe & Big T,” he wrote.

“Big T” began trending on Twitter, prompting a clarification from the president in a follow up tweet.

“Big T was not a reference to me, but rather to Big Tech, which should have been properly pointed out in Twitter’s Fake Trending Section!” Trump tweeted.

Twitter Shuts Down Entire Network To Slow Spread Of Negative Biden News https://t.co/JPmjOrKPcr via @TheBabylonBee Wow, this has never been done in history. This includes his really bad interview last night. Why is Twitter doing this. Bringing more attention to Sleepy Joe & Big T

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 16, 2020

Big T was not a reference to me, but rather to Big Tech, which should have been properly pointed out in Twitter’s Fake Trending Section!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 16, 2020

Trump’s tweets appeared to at least briefly crash The Babylon Bee’s site. The article the president shared made light of Thursday’s Twitter crash, joking that it occurred because Democrats were getting bad publicity.

“[Twitter CEO Jack] Dorsey ran downstairs and started smashing as many computers as he could, but he did need to ask for some help, as the hammer was pretty heavy,” the article reads. “None of the programmers could lift the hammer, either. Eventually, they managed to program a robot to pick up the sledgehammer and smash the servers.”

The Babylon Bee describes itself as “the world’s best satire site.”

Trump shared the satirical article as he and other conservatives have blasted Twitter for its handling of a New York Post story that alleges Biden’s son Hunter Biden used his influence to connect a Ukrainian businessman with his father. The sourcing of the story has raised skepticism, and the Biden campaign has denied the allegations in it.

Twitter blocked users from sharing the piece on Wednesday and suspended some accounts of users who tweeted out the link. The decision was made under the platform’s policy on sharing hacked information, which has since been revised, but drew widespread confusion and outrage as the restrictions were imposed initially without explanation.

Conservatives have long accused executives at Twitter and other social media platforms of harboring an anti-conservative bias, and the intervention on the New York Post story only added to those complaints.