Many conservative groups and figures saw their approval of Trump’s speech amplified by automated retweets. | Getty Trump address Twitter numbers appear to be boosted by 'bots' Conservative groups flooded #JointAddress and #JointSession with polls, tweets.

President Donald Trump’s first congressional address — widely celebrated as the most-tweeted presidential address to Congress ever — appears to have been boosted by pro-Trump “bot” accounts.

Even before they started trending yesterday, the official hashtags — #JointAddress and #JointSession — accumulated decidedly inorganic traffic, including from some accounts that had never tweeted about any other topic. Telltale signs of automated traffic include lack of a profile picture and prolific output.


Many conservative groups and figures saw their approval of Trump’s speech amplified by automated retweets.

For instance, one conservative non-profit, Secure America Now, flooded the #JointAddress hashtag with a hawkish pseudo-poll about such foreign policy issues as the Muslim Brotherhood and relations with Iran. The poll spread with help from automated accounts, some of which continued to disseminate the poll hours after Trump stepped away from the teleprompters.

Secure America Now, which formed in 2011 out of opposition to the “Ground Zero mosque” in New York City, shot the poll to its 44,000 followers early yesterday morning. The group did not respond to emailed inquiries.

The poll asked readers to select the top national security issue that Trump should address in his speech. The four possible answers aligned with Secure America Now’s core platform, including designating the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, scrapping the Iran deal, and moving the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. President Trump did refer to “radical Islamic terrorism,” reportedly against the advice of his national security adviser, which was the fourth and most generic option.

When Paul Ryan raised his gavel, responses to the Secure America Now poll accounted for approximately 3 percent of a sample of 25,000 tweets on #JointAddress. Earlier in the afternoon, the share was as high as 10 percent of tweets in the hashtag’s stream.

Since helping to torpedo the construction of the Islamic cultural center in downtown Manhattan, Secure America Now has leaned into social media hard. In August 2015, the group commissioned the first political Snapchat filter. and went after Hillary Clinton during the election using “Game of Thrones” memes and “lapdog” videos on Vine.

The trick to Secure America Now’s poll is that was self-perpetuating: once you selected an option, your account tweeted out not only your preference, but another copy of the poll itself, as well.

In fact, this poll wasn’t even a true Twitter poll, but a type of Twitter “card” primarily used by brand marketers.

The poll’s #RadicalIslamicTerror option got more than 60 percent of the “results,” according to our sample, followed by the #MuslimBrotherhood option at around 25 percent.

Many poll respondents seem to be Trump supporters — around 15 percent who tweeted the poll have pro-Trump slogans in their bios, like #MakeAmericaGreatAgain or "AmericaFirst". A number also describe themselves as conservative Christians.

But the poll’s intrinsic virality doesn’t seem to account for how much play it got on a trending hashtag. Many of the accounts tweeting it out have a lot of bot-like characteristics. Among other tells, their astonishing output is virtually all retweets of pro-Trump memes and anti-Hillary screeds, hundreds of such posts per day. There were also plenty of "egg" bots, which have no profile picture, and accounts with suspiciously generic bios.

Perhaps most tellingly, a few of the bot accounts completed the poll after Trump finished his speech.

Secure America Now applauded Trump’s remarks through its own Twitter posts, particularly the president’s commitments to fighting terrorism and strengthening ties with Israel.

Asked about the poll, a Twitter spokesperson said, referring to Twitter card technology, “This reporting is based on a misunderstanding of a common Twitter advertising tool rather than informed data.”

