Twitter was abuzz Thursday night with the news that Donald Trump Jr. had just followed a porn account. That wasn’t quite right, though: The president’s son actually followed the raunchy account in question a long time ago.
Trump Alert is an automated Twitter feed that sends a tweet whenever someone associated with President Donald Trump follows a new account. On Thursday, it reported that Donald Trump Jr. had just followed a horny, porny account called @djr_102, display name “Vanilla.”
This actually appears to be a case of djr_102 being reactivated given that earlier the account disappeared? https://t.co/UGXvvfH2K6 https://t.co/CJq9kWCDVt
— Trump Alert (@TrumpsAlert) January 11, 2018
Huffington Post reporter Ashley Feinberg, who’s well-known for digging up political figures’ sordid internet paper trails, brought the Trump Jr.-Vanilla connection to everyone’s attention with a tweet showing some of Vanilla’s recent work. (Warning: it’s very NSFW.)
DON JR RED ALERT pic.twitter.com/MYXJgl3OY2
— Ashley Feinberg (ashleyfeinberg.bsky.social) (@ashleyfeinberg) January 11, 2018
The explicit choking image is a nice touch, but Vanilla isn’t really a visual account. Mostly, he tweets about his own dick, about “cum,” “busting nuts,” and… cheese.
You get the idea. Anyway, it soon became clear that this was not a new follow for Trump Jr. It just looked new because of a Twitter quirk.
“This actually appears to be a case of djr_102 being reactivated given that earlier the account disappeared?” the person behind the Trump Alert account posited in a follow-up tweet. Vanilla’s last tweet before he deactivated, announcing he was going to “love and leave,” came on Dec. 21.
Scrolling through Trump’s list of followed accounts, which Twitter displays in chronological order, reveals that he must have followed Vanilla years ago. Since Vanilla was somewhere between the 700th and 800th person he followed, and he followed 800 people by 2015, it looks like he probably followed the account sometime that year.
The account shows up well before Trump started to follow Republican politicians, alt-right media personalities, and others associated with his father’s campaign. At the time, he was more into hunting, fishing, professional golfers, and Simpsons quotes:
It’s unclear who is Vanilla actually is, though, and why Trump Jr. followed him in the first place.
Despite the initials “DJR,” this doesn’t seem to be a case of Don Jr. following his own alternate account. Vanilla claims to be single, which Trump Jr. is not, and what appears to be a selfie on the timeline doesn’t look anything like Trump Jr. Vanilla also claims to be from Scotland and uses “mate” in his tweets.
Furthermore, Vanilla has more than 13,000 followers, making it less likely he’s someone Trump Jr. knows personally.
This could just be a case of a man following a popular-ish, porn-ish account years before it would have had any political implications. And, because he followed it before the Trump Alert account started, it wasn’t detected until the account disappeared and then reactivated.
Still, the Trump watchers on Twitter are all over it, equating it to the time Ted Cruz’s account favorited a “MILF” porn video.
Red Letter Day for the Trump family.
Dad refers to some countries as ‘shitholes’
Jr follows porn account djr_102#MAGA— Kimmel to trump: Isn’t it past your jail time (@MaggieJordanACN) January 11, 2018
https://twitter.com/Caliph45/status/951595165243785218
https://twitter.com/5280_Josh/status/951603577344151552
Trump Jr.’s not the first public figure to learn the hard way about cleaning up his internet history. In fact, this isn’t even his first lesson. Feinberg, writing for Gawker in 2016, exposed a number of his old pseudonymous posts on hunting and fishing message boards.