December 5, 2018

Rudy Giuliani Turns Typo Into Baseless, Anti-Twitter Conspiracy Theory

Normal behavior from the president’s former cybersecurity adviser.

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It was business as usual for Rudy Giuliani, who on Friday took to Twitter to bash special counsel Robert Mueller and the ongoing Russia investigation. As with previous such attacks, the latest diatribe from the president’s lawyer featured multiple typos and odd spacings.

But thanks to the work of one mischievous user, Giuliani’s latest error-ridden tweet took an even more embarrassing turn that, for a prankster seeking to make a fool of one of the president’s more prominent allies, could not have been executed more perfectly. 

It happened as Jason Velazquez, a web designer from Atlanta, noticed that Giuliani on Friday had inadvertently created a hyperlink in his tweet by failing to include a space between a period and the following word. Velazquez clicked the accidental link and realized no one had registered the domain. “Without thinking, I went and purchased the domain and then I thought, ‘I could literally put whatever I want up and he would either have to delete the tweet or leave it up because you can’t edit a tweet,'” he told the Washington Post.

Realizing the opportunity, Velazquez created a site with a simple message: “Donald J. Trump is a traitor to our country.” 

Days later, Giuliani, who once served as Donald Trump’s cybersecurity adviser, finally noticed. On Tuesday night, he blasted off a baseless conspiracy theory accusing Twitter of allowing “someone to invade my text with a disgusting anti-President message.”

“Don’t tell me they are not committed card-carrying anti-Trumpers,” he wrote.

The mockery quickly rolled in, with many pointing out that Giuliani was the victim of a successful viral prank. A Twitter spokesman also weighed in, telling the New York Times that “the accusation that we’re artificially injecting something into a tweet is completely false.”

As of Wednesday morning, Giuliani’s tweet has not been deleted.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

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And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

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