President-elect mistakenly retweets praise for council worker from England with same first name as his daughter

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

A council worker from Brighton, whom Donald Trump mistook on Twitter for his own daughter, has urged the president-elect to face up to his responsibilities and learn more about climate change.

Trump quoted a praiseworthy tweet directed to him by Lawrence Goodstein, a Twitter user in Seekonk, Massachusetts, that described his daughter Ivanka as “a woman with real character and class” late on Monday.

But Goodstein had mistakenly put @Ivanka, not @IvankaTrump – not a significant mistake in light of Goodstein’s 160-odd followers, but of far greater consequence circulated by Trump to his 20.1 million.



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So Trump’s shoutout was instead directed to Ivanka Majic, a council worker from Brighton, England, who used to work for the Labour party, whose number of Twitter followers doubled overnight.

Majic has taken advantage of her moment on the global stage by urging Trump to both take more care in his tweets and accept the scientific consensus about manmade climate change, which Trump challenged during his campaign.

Replying to the president-elect, she tweeted: “And you’re a man with great responsibilities. May I suggest more care on Twitter and more time learning about #climatechange.”

She also tweeted data pointing out that 97.5% of publishing climatologists and about 90% of all publishing scientists supported the human-induced climate theory.

Ivanka Majic (@ivanka) @realDonaldTrump @drgoodspine And you're a man with great responsibilities. May I suggest more care on Twitter and more time learning about #climatechange. pic.twitter.com/kBMEGZYtig

Overnight Majic has attracted a global following. “Ivanka Majic from Brighton, England, is a wonderful woman. You’re right,” replied Mark Pygas, a writer for Distractify, to Trump and Goodstein. “I mean, she’s probably trying to sleep and her phone is going off the hook but it’s a hell of a story.” According to a subsequent screenshot tweeted by Pygas, Goodstein blocked him for pointing out the error and made his account private.

Mark Pygas (@MarkPygas) @realDonaldTrump @drgoodspine @ivanka Ivanka Majic from Brighton, England, is a wonderful woman. You're right. RIP her mentions though. pic.twitter.com/FH4f2KMOQU

Trump had not deleted his tweet nor acknowledged his mistake at the time of writing, though Goodstein made his account private. It had been retweeted 2,800 times and favourited 15,000 times, with more than 4,600 replies – the vast majority of them including Majic.

The Guardian has attempted to contact Majic, believed to be employed as a researcher at Brighton and Hove city council. Her profile suggests she is not as active a user of Twitter as the president-elect, with just six tweets – most of them retweets – in the past week.

Her last activity on Twitter was a retweet encouraging votes in Brighton’s upcoming restaurant competition and another publicising a resident’s appeal for the return of her lost house keys.

On Saturday, Majic had tweeted a link to a news story about Brighton’s “thriving food scene”:

Meanwhile, Ivanka Trump, who campaigned with Trump and is moving to Washington DC as her husband, Jared Kushner, becomes a senior White House adviser, seemed oblivious to the compliment paid to her by Goodstein, sharing a photo of “#datenight” with her 2.74 million followers.

Ivanka Trump (@IvankaTrump) bright lights, big city #datenight pic.twitter.com/XclaOxvus4

Goldstein’s misdirected tweet had come during a CNN programme on the incoming first daughter featuring interviews with her brothers, Donald Jnr and Eric Trump, and about which their father had expressed concerns:

Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) At 9:00 P.M. @CNN, of all places, is doing a Special Report on my daughter, Ivanka. Considering it is CNN, can't imagine it will be great!

As president, Trump will have the option of taking over the official @POTUS Twitter handle or maintaining his own, @realDonaldTrump. With 20.1 million followers hanging on his every missive compared with @POTUS’s 13.5 million, Trump has given no indication he will make the switch.

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Sean Spicer, the incoming White House press secretary, told CNN earlier this month that Trump would “probably be tweeting from both, or whatever he chooses”.

Last week, BuzzFeed News publicised concerns that Trump’s “shockingly insecure” personal Twitter account had no known special security protections and was open to being exploited with potentially devastating impacts for the stock market and geopolitical stability.

It would not be the first time Trump’s account has been hacked: in 2013, when he was best-known as a real estate tycoon and host of The Apprentice TV show, someone reportedly gained access to his account to tweet Lil Wayne lyrics (“These hoes think they classy, well that’s the class I’m skippen”, from the remix of will.i.am and Britney Spear’s Scream & Shout).

“My Twitter has been seriously hacked --- and we are looking for the perpetrators,” Trump tweeted at the time.