A Nova Scotia university student who has been collecting tweets of disillusioned Donald Trump voters has attracted quite a celebrity following, including billionaire Mark Cuban, sworn Trump-nemesis Rosie O’Donnell and Hollywood personalities Olivia Wilde and Chaz Bono.
Erica Baguma, a 23-year-old social anthropology student at University of King’s College in Halifax, created the @Trump_Regrets Twitter account last November. The idea came to her while scrolling through social media to see how Trump supporters were reacting to the president-elect’s reversal on his campaign promise to appoint a special prosecuter to look into Democratic rival Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server.
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Baguma started retweeting Trump voters’ misgivings about his unorthodox social media use, dismissal of U.S. intelligence reports that Russia had meddled in the 2016 election and wealthy cabinet picks that some felt contradicted his pledge to “drain the swamp” in Washington.
She’s now picked up some 186,000 followers. Other notables include actor Adam Pally and T.V. producer Dan Harmon.
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Baguma says the chorus of Trump defectors grew around inauguration day as it became clear that Trump’s rhetoric on the campaign trail was not just bluster and he intended to follow through on plans to repeal government-subsidized health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, more commonly known as “Obamacare.”
Baguma says interest in the account surged as several of the celebrity followers latched on. Democratic member of North Carolina’s Senate Jeff Jackson tweeted that the account was proof that “people can change.”
Baguma says Trump diehards have lashed out at the account as a “smear campaign” and have accused her of fabricating the thousands of retweets for political purposes, even though some of the original accounts date back years.
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While Trump detractors have relished the tweets as affirmation of their pre-existing beliefs, Baguma says contrite Trump voters have also found solace in knowing they’re not alone.
Baguma, who was born in Uganda, says that as a woman of colour, she felt personally targeted by Trump’s characterization of black Americans as “nothing more than perpetrators and victims of inner-city violence.”
She says the account has given her a new perspective on Trump supporters as a diverse coalition of voters who may have overlooked his more inflammatory statements because they believed he was looking out for the country’s best interest.
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