Devin Nunes begs Russian bots to make his tweet go viral
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) has seemingly embraced our robot overlords.
Apparently skewering the people who acknowledge that Russian bots have spread disinformation on Twitter, Nunes implored the mighty Russian technology to make one of his own tweets take off. While retweeting an article by The Federalist about the ongoing investigations into Russian election meddling, Nunes quipped: "PS-if you are a Russian Bot please make this go viral."
For good measure, there was a post-postscript: "PSS-if you're not a Russian Bot you will become one if you retweet."
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The Federalist article that Nunes retweeted asserts that the "mainstream press" is overhyping the prominence of Russian bots on Twitter in order to belittle conservative arguments. In sharing the post, Nunes promised his followers they could "[catch] up on mainstream media Russian conspiracy theories."
Unfortunately, Russian bots have not taken Nunes' request to heart: At time of writing, his tweet had only been retweeted 1,900 times.
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Kelly O'Meara Morales is a staff writer at The Week. He graduated from Sarah Lawrence College and studied Middle Eastern history and nonfiction writing amongst other esoteric subjects. When not compulsively checking Twitter, he writes and records music, subsists on tacos, and watches basketball.
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