This week, Atlantic editor David Frum cited a five-year-old tweet by Ivanka Trump as evidence that President Donald Trump is “selling foreign policy” for “hotels and handbags.”
Frum was one of the fish reeled in when Internet wags suddenly resurrected Ivanka’s five-year-old tweet posted in 2012 when she was celebrating the Trump empire’s launch of a new Trump hotel in Istanbul, Turkey.
But Ivanka’s suddenly re-tweeted old post caught the eyes of a list of liberals who lashed out at Ivanka and the president. The exercised replies showed that commenters clearly thought the tweet was newly posted by the presidential daughter.
Former Bush speechwriter David Frum was among those who were fooled by the tweet. He jumped to his keyboard to excoriate the president and moan about how Trump is “selling” America’s foreign policy.
“This is so beyond troubling into alarming,” Frum proclaimed of the old tweet. “US foreign policy has been sold for hotels & handbags.”
Of course, when Ivanka posted her tweet back in 2012 she had no chance of influencing any foreign policy choices. Neither Ivanka nor Donald Trump had any connection to foreign policy; they were just business people.
Frum wasn’t alone. Bomb throwing columnist Louise Mensch was also fooled by the timeline of the tweet. Without bothering to look to see when it was originally written, Mensch quickly replied to the tweet, telling Ivanka, “You’re going to jail.”
Writer Dennis Perkins also jumped into the fray without checking the date of the tweet. Reality TV actress Ariane Bellamar, TV producer Harley Peyton, and a host of others were also fooled into thinking Ivanka’s tweet was new.
Several purported journalists and entertainers and dozens of regular liberal voters were also fooled into replying to the re-tweeted posting as if it were a new entry in Ivanka’s Twitter feed.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com.
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