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Trump retweets bigoted conspiracy theorist

Jerry Travone meets @realDonaldTrump.

President Donald Trump waves as he walks from Marine One across the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, Wednesday, Aug. 23, 2017, as he returns from Reno, Nev. CREDIT: AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster
President Donald Trump waves as he walks from Marine One across the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, Wednesday, Aug. 23, 2017, as he returns from Reno, Nev. CREDIT: AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster

Donald Trump retweeted a meme from an account Thursday morning that has pushed conspiracy theories, advocated violence against protesters, and seems to believe white Americans are under attack for being white.

The retweet came in the midst of a tweetstorm ridden with basic grammar mistakes in which Trump attacked both Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI), as well as the “Fake News” media.

Travone is part of a pattern Trump has of retweeting bots and Trump supporters pushing conspiracy theories and extremist rhetoric, elevating fringe voices from his favorite platform.

The user, whose screen name is Jerry Travone, says in his Twitter bio that he is a “YouTube actor and political junkie” who is a “proud Trump supporter and pushback against liberalism.”

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Last week Travone tweeted “#BanMuslims,” and later the same day, he said, “I haven’t seen one Muslim denounce any terrorist attack . They never march for peace or raise money for a cause.”

Travone has also often tweeted about believing white people in the U.S. are under attack.

“I’m a very happy man,” he tweeted in June. “My candidate won and the dems won’t condemn my son to tax slavery. Now he won’t be attacked for being white.”

In March, Travone called BuzzFeed “total fake news” and said the outlet was “racist to white people.”

Just four days ago, Travone tweeted, “We have enough of these jews where I live lol someone else take them . They just can’t drive”

Travone has also aggressively pushed a debunked conspiracy theory about a Democratic National Committee staffer, Seth Rich, who was shot last year. A number of conservative media figures falsely connected Rich’s death to the leak of DNC emails during the 2016 campaign.

A lawsuit filed earlier this month claims Trump himself encouraged Fox News to push the story.

“Seth rich was murdered by the dems for selling the dnc emails to Wikileaks’s . So I don’t care if trump tried to get the story mainstream,” Travone tweeted earlier this month.

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In May, he tweeted, “Russia did nothing , it was a man named Seth Rich that gave @wikileaks the emails and Hillary kill.”

On August 13, one day after a woman, Heather Heyer, was killed by a man who drove his car into a group of counter-protesters in Charlottesville, Travone advocated for police to be violent with protesters, tweeting, “I wouldn’t feel sorry if those little masked fucks got smashed in the face with those clubs . They start so much trouble in rallys”

Travone also used transphobic language when he lashed out at Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) after the senator voted against the GOP’s “skinny repeal” plan to replace Obamacare, tweeting, “John McCain is trans republican”

Also, not to be pedantic, but the expiration date on eclipse memes has passed.