Who was behind the fake “Blacks for Howard Schultz” Twitter account?

| 9:00 pm EST February 1, 2019
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No one is excited about former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz’s plan to run for president as an independent third party candidate, with the exception of the people who are excited that it might help Donald Trump. Even as Schultz faces very real backlash and controversy, he’s gained some very fake supporters – one of whom just got busted.

This week a Twitter account called “@blacks4schultz” emerged and quickly began picking up a suspiciously large number of followers. The account presented itself as being run by unnamed African Americans who supported Howard Schultz for president. The trouble: the whole thing was rather obviously a fake.

The phrasing of the tweets was an absurdly over the top and inaccurate attempt at “sounding black.” And internet sleuths quickly figured out that the profile picture of a black guy supposedly wearing a “Howard” shirt was in fact just a stock photo of a random guy with the word “Howard” clumsily superimposed over it.

The good news is that Twitter ended up suspending the account for being a fake. We still have no idea who was really behind it. There is no evidence at all that Howard Schultz himself was involved in this. But it is clear that someone out there is already trying to fraudulently use Schultz’s candidacy to fit their own agenda. In 2016 the Russians bent over backward on social media to falsely promote Jill Stein, Bernie Sanders, and anyone else who could pick off votes from the frontrunner Hillary Clinton in order to help Donald Trump. It looks like someone is already trying to use the Schultz campaign to help Trump in 2020. Then again, Trump will likely be in prison by 2020 anyway.