Donald Trump’s Twitter game plunged new depths of bizarre on Tuesday, when the US president retweeted someone who called him a “fascist”.
The tweeter-in-chief appeared to accidentally share the short aside from user Mike Holden, which said of Trump: “He’s a fascist, so not unusual.”
Holden was replying to a tweet from Fox News programme ‘Fox and Friends’ which said Trump was considering a pardon for controversial ex-Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio.
Arpaio was recently found guilty of criminal contempt for ignoring a court order to cease the targeting of suspected undocumented immigrants through traffic stops.
Trump’s unintentional RT prompted Holden, a Brit from northern England, to revel in the glory of the gaffe.
Holden told HuffPost UK on Tuesday: “I’m astounded. My notifications went bananas. I may retire from Twitter, I’ll never top that.
“I try not to be just another troll, there’s too many [things to say about Donald Trump], but I often comment on his stuff because it’s so wrong for America (& the rest of us).”
It’s not the first retweet controversy for Trump in the past 24 hours.
After denouncing far-right extremists on Monday, Trump retweeted a far-right “Pizzagate” conspiracy theorist, Jack Posobiec, known for disrupting a performance of “Julius Caesar” over the summer.
Critics saw that retweet as an attempt to deflect attention from his belated response to white supremacist violence in Charlottesville this past weekend.
As well as an implicit effort to draw attention to crime within the African-American community:
Posobiec, for his part, thanked the president for the retweet.
With additional reporting from Ned Simons and Ed Mazza.