When James Gandolfini passed yesterday, the world lost a phenomenal actor and, by all accounts, a good man. Never having gotten into ‘The Sopranos,’ I mostly remembered him from 'True Romance’ and 'The Mexican.’ He sold his performances, and there’s no question as to how so many people could become so attached to an actor who made fictional universes so vivid to them.

Out of respect, I posted the following tweet:

But Twitter is Twitter, and my personal account is dedicated to feeble attempts at making people laugh. I also never turn down an opportunity to parody Donald Trump, because it’s insanely easy, and he does 90% of the work himself.

So I thought about what kinds of things I could see Trump saying following the news, and followed my previous tweet up with this:

Let me be clear: Donald Trump never said this. I completely made it up assuming people would know I was poking fun at the Donald. I failed to account, however, for the fact that this is very much something people could conceive of Donald Trump saying.

It got barely any stars or retweets, meaning I had failed at my job to be funny. Maybe people thought it was in bad taste. It wasn’t a James Gandolfini joke. It was a Donald Trump joke. Whatever. I moved on. But unbeknownst to me, a massively beautiful internet storm had already started to take shape.

I didn’t know it at the time, but one of my followers had retweeted it. He didn’t menton my handle, so I received no notification. He did take the fabricated Trump quote, though.

Soon, that was retweeted. A lot. And eventually, someone added a #p2 tag - which drew all sorts of angry liberals - and before long everyone was jumping all over this thing like Carrot Top in a Brazilian soccer riot.

Even journalist and commentator Zerlina Maxwell got on board - this time asserting that the Trumpster had deleted the tweet.

Again, he hadn’t. There was no tweet but mine. (This probably wasn’t her fault. By that time many people were claiming the Trump tweet had been deleted.)

I didn’t see any of this going on in my feed, because none of these tweets tagged me. I also don’t spend time looking at political tags on Twitter, because Twitter is a place for jokes about bacon and Paula Deen cooking meals for David Duke.

Not long after, the quote jumped Twitter and moved westward, making posts on Facebook like this one, this thread on the Democratic Underground and this whacko right-wing blog that’s filled with all stripes of lunacy but actually rightly pointed out that there was no evidence the tweet ever existed.

Trump was, at this point, getting angry quips every minute or so. The beads of sweat were slowly collecting on his brow and beginning to send his hair careening down the side of his head like a tumbleweed avalanche atop some mythical, orange narcissist mountain.

He realized something was up. He just didn’t know what. It was time to play Clue. But first - damage control.

He then said I was “very sick.” (In the interest of full disclosure, I do have allergies.)

Soon people were asking if his account was hacked, and apparently no one questioned as to why there wasn’t a screenshot of this tweet. After all, even the craziest tweets Amanda Bynes deletes moments after posting are captured for posterity by some enterprising journalist (or twerking teenager). So Trump clarified again.

This is actually one of the most truthful things Trump has said in a while. To give credit where credit is due, he actually realized no one saw this tweet. But he also called me a dope, and I feel like I took an Uma Thurman 'Pulp Fiction’ syringe full of irony to the heart. But that was that.

Except like Lindsay Lohan, the tweet would not die. People wanted so badly for this to be a real quote, which makes no sense. (There are more real inane Trump quotes than you could possibly tweet in a lifetime). Nevertheless, it was clear by now that I had not only trolled Donald Trump unintentionally, but also a good deal of Twitter.

Clear to everyone except me, that is, because I’d yet to find out. Still, the Donald continued his positive PR campaign, essentially having to backpedal for something he didn’t do.

Finally, after Trump had sent out his team of flying monkeys cyber investigators, he discovered the perp.

I could have helped him out. If you search “Obamacare James Gandolfini” on Twitter here and scroll all the way down, you’ll find my tweet, a twitter bio that leads you to several other social networking sites with my real name and pictures of myself (sorry).

Now, when I collect tweets for the regular Celebrity Tweets of the Day column on Starcrush, I routinely check Trump’s feed because it’s a given for entertainment. (Related: scroll his feed and take a shot every time you read the words “loser” or “haters.” Invite friends. Trust me.)

As I scrolled through today, I saw something that seemed a bit personal to me. The investigation must have paid off, and a culprit was in sight. Feeling confident that he had me in a corner, Trump fired off a warning shot:

And then, this:



I didn’t know anything about this hoax, but seeing Trump mention “James Gandolfini”, “Obamcare” and “hoax” all at once got me thinking. After some cursory internet sleuthing, I realized that my throwaway tweet had snowballed, and that Donald Trump was subtly threatening me in under 140 characters.

Here’s some CC footage of me reading his coy admonishment:

So there you have it, Mr. Trump. I am the “mister hoaxer” (hope to be bumped up to Mister Manager some day) and I’m unabashed. Watching you try and make sense of the situation alone was worthwhile.

Go ahead and get it out of your system. Call me a lightweight and a loser. I don’t mind. Because spending my afternoon unraveling this thing was fun.

And we both know the real loser is whoever purchased Trump Steaks™.