Since it’s the U.S. presidential election and all, The Chaser decided to impersonate Trump on Twitter.
We’ve come to expect a bunch of shenanigans from The Chaser whenever there’s an election on, and this year’s U.S. presidential election is no different as the comedy troupe decided to go after Trump.
But compared to things like their infamous 2007 APEC stunt or even their recent COVID-19 prank on The Star Casino in Sydney, this group’s latest dig at Trump was pretty tame compared to their usual standards as all they did this time was impersonate the incumbent president on Twitter.
The Chaser changed their Twitter name to “Donald J Trump,” used Trump’s actual profile picture and tweeted “Don’t vote for me, I’m a massive idiot.”
Unsurprisingly, this caught a lot of people’s attention. Aussies found it bloody hilarious while a bunch of Americans lost their mind over this tweet, seemingly unable to deduce from the Chaser’s Twitter handle that it was a prank.
Twitter on the other hand weren’t too happy with this little stunt and quickly revoked The Chaser’s blue tick before straight up suspending their entire account about 30 minutes later, but not before screenshots were taken and the tweet had been shared several thousands of times.
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In response to Twitter suspending their account, an article titled ‘Comedy group The Chaser suspended by Twitter after impersonating Donald Trump’ was published by The Chaser’s website editor Cam Smith.
“We understand why twitter would do this,” said wrote Smith. “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.”
“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% of the world’s nukes.”
The irony of Twitter suspending the The Chaser’s account for their Trump prank wasn’t lost on people, who pointed out how the social media giant got pissy over some comedians doing their thing yet are perfectly fine to let alt-right folk, actual Nazis, and Trump himself sprout misinformation for years.
That’s a topic for another day, but as far as The Chaser and their Trump prank goes, it was worth the suspension of their Twitter account.
Looks like they have suspended the @chaser account. I can imagine the meltdowns at Twitter HQ. Comedians? Suspend. Nazis? Give them a tick. pic.twitter.com/9FvDZXWAu5
— Preston Towers (@prestontowers) November 3, 2020
https://twitter.com/DanielCrute/status/1323585528692789248