‘Don’t vote for me, I’m a massive idiot’, says ‘Trump’

An Auustralian comedy group, The Chaser, on Tuesday posed as Donald Trump.

The satirical group changed its name and image on Twitter to mirror Trump’s account before tweeting: “Don’t vote for me, I’m a massive idiot.” Its bio read: “Not the 45th President of the United States of America, just some very naughty boys.”

The post attracted thousands of likes and shares before being deleted from the website, although screenshots continued to circulate across the platform today.

“Well, we had a good run,” the Chaser team wrote on Facebook about the moderation decision. The post likely violated the social network’s impersonation policy that stops users creating accounts that could potentially dupe other users.

Twitter’s rules state: “accounts that pose as another person, brand, or organization in a confusing or deceptive manner may be permanently suspended.”

While the rules say users are allowed to have parody or fan accounts, portraying another profile “in a misleading or deceptive manner” is deemed to be against policy.

“We understand why Twitter would do this,” The Chaser’s website editor Cam Smith said in a statement to The Shot, a news website created by the comedy group.

“After all, it would not be out of the ordinary for Trump to tweet something so outlandish. If anything this would have been one of his more reasonable tweets, so we could see how people might get mixed up,” Smith continued.

“It’s impressive that Twitter only took 20 minutes to unverify our tweet—given it took them almost four years to start fact checking the actual President.

“I guess that’s to be expected though, we all know comedians words are much more dangerous than those of the guy who controls 50 percent of the world’s nukes.”