Not long after re-orienting themselves into a politics-focused site, writers at Gawker apparently created a Twitter account that tweets quotes from Benito Mussolini, the "father of fascism" and inspiration to Hitler (before becoming Hitler's lesser ally), and attributes them to Donald Trump. Many of the lines weren't actually too much of a stretch.
https://twitter.com/ilduce2016/status/704005716764450816Although Donald Trump arguably has a stronger Twitter game (except for spell check) than any candidate to date, he has one social media Achilles' Heel—he will manually retweet almost anything praising him, even if it is from known KKK members, white supremacists, and other spewers of hate. Presumably, it's because he doesn't check his sources. Everyone presumes that because the alternative, that Trump knows what he's doing, is much worse. This happens, um, way more often than you would think, like this quote from @WhiteGenocideTM.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/690562515500032000?ref_src=twsrc%5EtfwSo, Gawker created @ilduce2016, a reference to Mussolini's title at the head of the Italian fascist regime, Il Duce, or The Leader. Today, they struck paydirt.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/703900742961270784?ref_src=twsrc%5EtfwPeople were quick to realize what had happened.
https://twitter.com/ditzkoff/status/703912576363552768?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfwhttps://twitter.com/radovankavicky/status/703951379103150080?ref_src=twsrc%5EtfwAnd before long, Gawker came forward to take credit.
https://twitter.com/Gawker/status/703974595787882498?ref_src=twsrc%5EtfwSo, what did Trump think? He played it off like everyone quotes Mussolini, and said fine with it. So, either he's pretending that he knew about this instance, or he was pretending not to know all the times he retweeted white supremacists.
Congrats, guys, and well played. Head over to Gawker to read more about how they set this honeypot for the political world's most avid (yet apparently gullible) tweeter.
Related: Donald Trump is every jerk in the 'Game of Thrones' spoof 'Winter Is Trumping.'