You probably heard about this:
Early Saturday morning, President Trump tweeted his gratitude to a social-media super-fan, Nicole Mincey, magnifying her praise of him to his 35 million followers.
Here’s the problem: There is no evidence the Twitter feed belongs to someone named Nicole Mincey. And the account, according to experts, bears a lot of signs of a Russia-backed disinformation campaign.
On Sunday, Twitter suspended the Mincey account, known as @ProTrump45, after several other users revealed that it was probably a fake, created to amplify pro-Trump content.
The Post article I linked to goes on to say:
Even as the president has railed against multiple investigations into Russia’s meddling in U.S. politics, he may have become Exhibit A of the foreign government’s influence by elevating a suspected Russia-connected social-media user — part (of) a sophisticated campaign to exacerbate disputes in U.S. politics and gain the attention of the most powerful tweeter in the world.
I have one problem here: is it really all that sophisticated?
Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s fascinating and a bit scary that Russian propaganda and right-wing media have merged into one (check out this site that tracks Russian twitter bots and how often they link to Breitbart and Gateway Pundit). But what they’re doing is quite simple. You create an account called DeplorableCindy or whatever and make your avatar a stock photo of a Hooter’s model. Then you rewteet whatever nonsense Sean Hannity or Jim Hoft is babbling about that hour. Sometimes you do something a little fancier than that (as with the Nicole Mincey fabrication described above). But it’s not string theory.
I doubt it has that much influence. The fact that it fooled Dolt45 doesn’t prove anything.