On the day Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) announced his run for President, his official Twitter account retweeted a photoshopped image of Aurora theater shooter James Holmes declaring that he will “Stand With Rand.”
Just minutes before Paul took the stage on Tuesday in Louisville, Ky., Paul’s account hyped his announcement on social media by rapidly retweeting people claiming to be supporters of the 2016 hopeful.
Among them, was at least one imposter.
The user @firescotch, using the hashtag #StandWithRand, sent in a photoshopped image of Holmes, the the accused killer of 12 people in Aurora, Colo. in 2012.
In the altered image, Holmes bore a smile and sunglasses and held up and card that said “#StandWithRand” along with Paul’s new logo.
The tweet remained up on Paul’s account for roughly 20 minutes before it disappeared.
Below is a screenshot of the tweet, followed by the list of people to have retweeted it:
The Mouse that Tweeted…
OOOPs
This group of Republican Presidential hopefuls will be the biggest collection of malignantly mendacious and enthusiastically pro-ignorance candidates in our history. That’s to be expected given that the GOP is a de facto theocratic party.
That’s wrong. Photoshop shouldn’t be abused to link people to a total nutjob like this. Someone owes an apology to that shooter guy.
Stupid is as stupid does.