We Talked to the Coder Behind the Best Trump Twitter Bot Yet

After Saturday's horrific terrorist attack on London Bridge, which left seven people dead and many more injured, world leaders released official statements in solidarity with the UK, which has seen three terror attacks in three months. US President Donald Trump took to Twitter to tell the world how he saw it with a series of especially terrible tweets, re-upping calls for a "Travel Ban," questioning why nobody was having a "gun debate," and lashing out at the London Mayor.

Now a twitter bot has emerged that publishes Donald Trump's tweets as Presidential statements, showing just how jarring they are coming from the US's highest elected official. I chatted with the man behind the machine, Russel Neiss, a coder and activist.

Neiss told me he was initially inspired by a tweet from Pat Cunnane, a writer, who mocked up Trump's tweet about the terrorist attack in London as an official Presidential statement.

"I thought, 'someone should make a bot about this,'" Neiss told me. "My kids took a nap and I took 40 minutes to put the thing together."

So far, the bot has amassed over 55,000 followers, and Neiss said that it's a "pretty good haul," especially considering that (by the time of our publication) it hadn't even been active a full 24 hours. He said the bot will run until the next President is inaugurated.

"When the President tweets, we should treat those words as formal," Neiss said. "This gives the proper honour to his word."

Neiss said that there could potentially be more bots made of others within the Trump camp, but the "unpolished" Twitter feed of the president is the most interesting for now. "(His Twitter) is an interesting view into what the man thinks and believes," he said. "Others are a little less free-wheeling."

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