National RNC Website Linked To Porn Site & The Reason Is Too Ridiculous To Be True

0
843

Not everyone in the Republican Party is as adept with Twitter as U.S. President Donald Trump. On Monday, Maryland’s Capital Gazette reported that for months, the website of the national Republican Party had been linking to a Twitter account that focused on porn instead of the official account of the Maryland GOP. After the outlet published their story, the Republican National Committee fixed their mistake.

Maryland Republican Party executive director Patrick O’Keefe chalked up the mishap to what’s basically a clerical error. The state had maintained a Twitter account with the handle now belonging to a porn account, but in January, they changed it. The state party shifted from operating under @mdreps to operating under @mdgop.

The Capital Gazette reported that O’Keefe knew the handle had been picked up by someone else in February.

He explained:

‘We did not [tell national officials]. We updated it on our website and all our entities then though. Not notifying the RNC back in February was just an oversight.’

The original shift occurred when O’Keefe was exploring verification for his state party’s Twitter account. He had sought to have Twitter keep the old handle away from other users — but those efforts did not amount to much, despite Twitter themselves having reportedly offered the service in the first place.

The party’s new account, @mdgop, did eventually get verified, now boasting the well known blue check mark, meaning Twitter ensures it’s actually the state GOP running the account.

mdgop National RNC Website Linked To Porn Site & The Reason Is Too Ridiculous To Be True Donald Trump Politics Social Media Top Stories

For months, though, the national RNC website linked to an unverified Twitter account operating as part of some kind of porn promotion scheme.

mdreps National RNC Website Linked To Porn Site & The Reason Is Too Ridiculous To Be True Donald Trump Politics Social Media Top Stories
Screenshot via Capital Gazette, taken August 6, 2018

For his part, Maryland Republican Party chairman Dirk Haire said he wasn’t concerned.

He explained:

‘Like virtually all Americans, I don’t go on Twitter. We use Facebook much more than Twitter.’

Tens of millions of individuals regularly use Twitter — including the president of the United States — but that’s the argument that Haire employed anyway.

Republicans have actually had ironic online mishaps with porn in the not too distant past.

Infamously, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas’ official account liked a porn tweet last year. He attributed that “like” to a staffer’s mistake, and it disappeared.

He explained:

‘It was a staffing issue and it was inadvertent. It was a mistake.’

While the internet had plenty of fun at Cruz’s expense, the Senator declined to say whether or not whatever staffer had liked the tweet would face any repercussions — or how exactly it had showed up on the timeline while someone had been logged into his official Twitter account in the first place.

The mishaps, although in the end trivial, offer convenient ways to poke holes in a political party whose platform is already sinking.

Ironically, the disconnect between reality and the GOP’s take on morality is well exposed by the national Republican take on Donald Trump’s affairs. Although in the past, they sought to impeach a president for seeking to cover up an affair, nowadays, the GOP is fine with presidents paying off adult film stars to keep quiet about affairs.

Featured Image via YouTube screenshot