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First Presidential Debate 2020: Trump tweets on Biden amid talk, Internet asks which 'mad man' runs his account?

Many social media users suggested that it was clear that the tweets coming from Trump's official account were not his because they were devoid of grammatical mistakes and typos

As President Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden sparred on Tuesday, September 30, during the first presidential debate of 2020, the Republican leader's Twitter account kept posting messages. A series of tweets from the president's Twitter account made multiple social media users speculate whether Trump really runs his account on the popular micro-blogging site. 

As Trump's account tweeted during the debate: "Joe wants to shut down this Country. I want to keep it OPEN!" Meidas Touch, a liberal-leaning content site, responded to the tweet, writing: "Trump doesn’t run his own Twitter account." The tweet led other social media users to speculate who the actual "mad man" was who was running the president's account, with one suggesting it was his eldest son Donald Trump Jr.

One user wrote: "Right?! Who’s the mad man behind his twitter? I think it’s Don jr coked out rage tweeting to make daddy proud." Another added: "Who is tweeting for Don Don? Is it QAnon? Is it the guy he owes $421 million to? Peasants want to know!" While a third speculated: "Brad Parscale is in charge of @realDonaldTrump’s twitter account from that hospital in Florida" referring to Trump's controversial former campaign manager who was hospitalized over the weekend.

A fourth wrote that one can differentiate these tweets from the ones Trump actually writes by checking their grammar. "Whenever there's a tweet without typos, you know it's from a Trump staffer. But I also saw a tweet from Biden during the debate. They both have backup tonight." Another agreed: "You can tell the tweets he doesn't write, they bare grammatical and spelled correctly and their premises aren't bonkers!" Former vice president Biden's Twitter account was also running while he was on the debate stage in Cleveland. 

Trump is arguably the only president of the country who has often used the micro-blogging platform as his main source of communication to the public. Twitter, however, has recently taken to flagging some of the president's tweet as the Republican continues to tweet controversial edited videos to his millions of followers. A few weeks ago Trump had shared an edited video of his political rival Biden on Twitter, on September 16, which was labeled as "manipulated media" by Twitter. The move came after the president shared a video, which appeared to show Biden playing rap group NWA’s song, 'F*** tha Police'. The original video, however, was of Biden playing Luis Fonsi's hit song 'Despacito' instead at a Hispanic Heritage Month event in Florida. Trump had tweeted the edited video, writing: "What is this all about?"

A Twitter spokesperson, while commenting on the first video shared by Trump, said that the "manipulated media" labeling on the clip was done based on the company's synthetic and manipulated media policy. The video was originally shared by a Twitter handle called United Spot, which describes itself as creator of satirical videos.

Twitter previously also attached labels to some of the president's tweets on its platforms, including adding fact-checking notices on his tweets containing misleading information about mail-in ballots. The company, in March, had attached a similar "manipulated media" tag to a previous video retweeted by Trump of Biden, where the Democrat appeared to endorse the Republican for the presidential elections.