Twitter suspended the account of French MP Joachim Son-Forget Saturday for impersonating Donald Trump and tweeting out messages in the U.S. president’s name.
A few hours after Twitter kicked Trump off the platform permanently on Friday, the name and photo on Son-Forget’s verified account were replaced with those of the U.S. president; one of the fake Trump’s tweets consists only of the word “HELP.”
This is not the first time that the South Korean-born MP, who represents France’s citizens in Switzerland and Liechtenstein in the National Assembly, has gotten into trouble for impersonating a politician on the social media platform: Last April Son-Forget’s account was similarly altered to feature French President Emmanuel Macron’s name and image.
Over the course of several hours the fake account was used to publish several messages, including one in which Macron apperared to express total agreement with Trump’s controversial statements about China’s role in the spread of the coronavirus.
Son-Forget later claimed that his phone and his account were hacked.
In 2018 the MP’s actions on Twitter led to his exit from Macron’s La République En Marche party; Son-Forget resigned after being reprimanded by group leaders for sexist tweets published about Senator Esther Benbassa.
In February of last year the MP also played a key role in spreading the graphic videos that torpedoed Benjamin Griveaux’s candidacy for Paris mayor.