As if Donald Trump’s dwindling presidency couldn’t get any more outrageous, it is now being revealed that a texting company run by one of his top campaign officials sent out thousands of text messages encouraging supporters to rally where votes were being tallied in Philadelphia. The targeted, anonymous text messages also falsely claimed that Democrats were trying to steal the election.
Gary Coby, CEO of Opn Sesame, is Trump’s campaign’s digital director. Two sources who chose to remain anonymous said that the texts were sent to Trump supporters using phone numbers leased to the text-messaging platform.
“This kind of message is playing with fire, and we are very lucky that it does not seem to have driven more conflict,” said John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at the University of Toronto’s online watchdog Citizen Lab. Scott-Railton helped track down the source.
One of the incendiary texts read, “ALERT: Radical Liberals & Dems are trying to steal this election from Trump! We need YOU!” The message instructed supporters to “show your support” by assembling on a street corner near the Philadelphia Convention Center, where votes were being counted.
Tensions in Pennsylvania are mounting as the state remains a battleground state in the presidential race.
One of the Trump insiders said that the text messages did not come from the campaign. Since Opn Sesame is used by multiple customers, it is impossible to determine with certainty exactly who sent the messages.
Chris Bray, a registered Independent who voted for Joe Biden, was among the recipients of the texts.
“I actually texted a number of other friends to say ‘hey, have you guys been getting robo-texts like this?’” Bray said. “It was a call to action. It borders on that the rhetoric that we’ve been hearing for months now, and that’s really dangerous if you get the right people together with a slight screw loose, we just don’t know what can happen.”
RoboKiller, the mobile app that allows users to block text and voice spam, discovered that the text messages were sent out using 13 different phone numbers. RoboKiller was then able to trace the numbers to Twilio, a gateway bulk-messaging service. Twilio responded by shutting down the phone numbers. In a statement, the company said the texts “were sent without consumer opt-out language, which is in direct contravention of our policies.”
Since September, nearly 80 million political text messages have been sent daily in the U.S., targeting both parties’ supporters. However, the text messages in support of Trump are filled with false information, including claims that the election is somehow rigged.
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