Elon Censors "Donald Drumpf"

Old Twitter censored people because it was "woke," Elon tells his fans. New Twitter censors people because Elon's a fascist.

You can get away with a lot on X these days.

Hardcore porn? No problem.

Racism? Antisemitism? Hate speech? That's so expected he'll sue you if you don't run your ads next to it.

Election misinformation? Deepfakes featuring Presidential candidates? Expect those to be force-fed to you directly from the owner's account.

For $8/month you can even pay Elon to have access to a new AI tool that will let you create realistic images of celebrities, politicians, school shootings—even deepfake porn and child porn.

What does it take to get suspended, or "shadow banned," as Matt Taibbi and the Twitter Files grifters used to say?

Apparently, for my @realDonalDrumpf parody account (“the original Drumpf on Twitter since 2013“), the final straw is tweeting a fact-based, thoroughly sourced thread about Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein.

The thread in question detailed the extraordinarily close relationship between Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein during a period in which: a) Epstein was routinely grooming and raping children; b) Donald Trump was consistently hanging out in his homes in both New York and Palm Beach; and c) Donald Trump is known to have been assaulting, harassing and even raping other girls and women, including Miss Teen USA pageant contestants and E. Jean Carroll.

And, as readers of this newsletter already know, Trump publicly dated at least one of Epstein's teenage victims after she turned 20.

Epsteined by Elon

The thread also points out that Trump's alleged rape of 13-year-old "Katie Johnson" (whose 2016 allegations were corroborated by two sworn witnesses) occurred during the same timeframe in which Donald Trump was openly expressing his lust toward his then-13-year-old daughter Ivanka, an attraction which he continued to voice publicly on TV two weeks before Melania gave birth to Barron and, according to former Chief of Staff John Kelly, even during his time at the White House.

The impetus for the "Drumpf" thread, which generated thousands of retweets and likes and almost 1,000,000 impressions before getting "Epsteined by Elon" was the "sick comparison" JD Vance made while attacking Kamala Harris over the weekend:

Trying to paint Harris as dangerously irresponsible when it comes to the nation’s finances, he told Fox News moderator Shannon Bream, “Giving Kamala Harris control over inflation policy, Shannon, it’s like giving Jeffrey Epstein control over human trafficking policy.”

The conceit of the thread was "Drumpf" having to explain to "Shady Vance" why it's never a good idea to use the name Jeffrey Epstein in public in a way that makes Trump's former BFF's name trend on X.

In the voice of “Drumpf,” I rehashed many of the points I’ve made in past articles here on Ghost, and in tweets and threads on X.

For the parody account, this hard-hitting and lengthy thread was in contrast to the usual “truth via humor” satire that the account has been known for.

Originally posted on Sunday night (August 18), the thread picked up steam gradually, across time zones. And as it amassed likes and retweets—and was quote-tweeted by users as far away as New Zealand—some X users began worrying how long it would be before Elon took it down.

By the morning of Tuesday August 20, users going to the @realDonalDrumpf page on X were greeted with the message "@RealDonalDrumpf hasn’t posted. When they do, their posts will show up here." Searching the account by name in the "People" search on X yields: "No results for '@realdonaldrumpf'"

As of 5:30pm ET on August 20, some tweets by @realDonalDrumpf still show up on Google, and the thread can still be read on Thread Reader App.

Whether the account will be restored remains TBD.

Blocked by Trump

By way of history, I started this particular account back in May 2013, around the time Donald Trump was in a feud with Jon Stewart over the fact that Stewart had dropped his family name (Leibowitz) when pursuing his comedy career. Stewart hit back by calling Trump "Fuckface von Clownstick," this being a time when feuding with Trump didn't come with the risk of being sent to the gulag.

Those were the days when Trump himself was not above feuding with his own parody account, although he blocked me after I exposed his racist ignorance about the "Central Park Five" in this exchange:

This brief exchange captures Trump's deeply held racism and his inability to "update his hard drive" based on new information—traits which are still obvious today, perhaps even more so as he slides into dementia.

My Drumpf account muddled along until 2016 when John Oliver launched the "Make Donald Drumpf Again" campaign. From there, the account grew quickly, gaining thousands of followers, topping 100,000 at its peak.

In 2017, amid a glut of Trump parody accounts, TIME listed it among the 11 best, noting:

This pointed account tries to play watchdog, riffing on Trump’s campaign promises and exaggerating his stances with plenty of sarcasm.

Today, Elon continues to present himself as a "free-speech absolutist" and share self-congratulatory content about how he's changed "old Twitter" to allow everyone the chance to post whatever lies and conspiracy theories they want to promote.

The "old Twitter" used to censor people because it was "woke," he tells his fans.

Meanwhile, the "new Twitter" censors people because Elon's a fascist.

21 August 2024 update: After multiple users tweeted about the canceling of "Real Donald Drumpf," with comments directed both at Elon Musk and X Support, the account has now been fully restored. No response was received from Support and no explanation was offered for the sudden disappearance of all 36,400 prior posts.

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