Trump tricked into retweeting ‘f*** Donald Trump’ account

'In all seriousness, our president is an awful, hateful human being,' prank account has since posted

The president's Twitter account has accidentally tweeted another user with the name "f*** Donald Trump" in an apparent prank.

The post – which was still online at the time of publication – appeared to be a generic reply indicating that the users' husband was a Trump-voting firefighter. Mr Trump's account has spent much of the morning sharing posts from people claiming to be firefighters who were backing the president over rival presidential hopeful Joe Biden, who has been endorsed by the firefighters' union.

One of the tweets shared by the president's account read: "My husband a New York City firefighter for 15 years will be voting Trump 2020 all the way!!"

But at least one of the posts does not appear to have come from a firefighter at all. Instead, someone appears to have shared the tweet above from a fake account.

As soon as Mr Trump had retweeted the post, the account's name was changed to read simply: "F*** Donald Trump". It also changed its profile image to a badge reading "Bernie 2020".

It followed up with another post that made clear that the account had been a prank, created by someone who said they disagreed with Mr Trump.

"What a great morning. In all seriousness, our president is an awful, hateful human being who wants nothing more than to keep the status quo and hatred prevalent in our country when we should be pushing forward with the rest of the world towards progress and change," a tweet posted on the account now reads. "Please vote."

Before the account changed its name, and when Mr Trump retweeted it, it appears to have been a genuine-looking account. In fact, it appears to have taken the identity of another account, copying its name and profile photo and using the exact same name, swapping out the "L" in the original handle for an uppercase "i", which looks identical.

Whoever is in control of that account presumably saw that the president's Twitter had been sharing posts by a flurry of people who replied to it indicating they were firefighters who will be voting for Mr Trump, and took the opportunity to send in another of those tweets in the hope it was shared. When it was, the name appears to have been changed to embarrass the president.

After the world's attention was drawn to the account, it posted another tweet reading: "Damn this blew up check out my Soundcloud", alongside a link. That link actually sent users to the Spotify page of Third Eye Blind, a US rock group.

The prank appears to have been at least a year and a half in the making. Ever since September 2017, it has been posting messages of support to Donald Trump in an apparent attempt to trick him into retweeting them, though the none of them have worked until today.