The 13-year-old black conservative boy who claimed that he had been blocked on Twitter by the president may not be telling the truth, according to internet sleuths.
CJ Pearson, the youth in question, has become a conservative internet sensation in the past year because of his sharply worded YouTube tirades criticizing the president.
On Wednesday, when Pearson tweeted a screenshot of @BarackObama blocking his account, the story attracted the attention of the Drudge report, Twitchy, the Daily Caller and several other conservative news outlets including PJ Media. But now his allegations have been seriously called into question. In fact, it seems that either someone punked him, or he was punking his followers.
White House assistant press secretary Frank Benenati swiftly tweeted that Pearson was wrong, and that “nobody is or has ever been blocked from the @POTUS twitter account.” That sent skeptics looking for cases where the account had blocked hostile accounts, and it inspired a new video from Pearson — which would be viewed half a million times — denouncing the White House for lying about him.
“They lied about Benghazi,” he said, in high dudgeon. “They lied about the IRS. They lie about every issue of importance to the American people.”
But other online sleuths could tell that something was off. First, a subsequent Pearson tweet revealed that he was still following @BarackObama. Second, there was no timestamp or external information on the tweet, and the kerning on the standard text “learn more” was skewed. Coincidentally, a popular parody account had previously tweeted an identical image (now deleted) of an Obama “blocking,” with the same kerning.
Oliver Darcy, a reporter for the Blaze, dug into all of this and contacted Pearson. The wunderkind initially told him that he’d taken the shot on a Droid tablet. In the video, Pearson had claimed that he saw the blocking when he “got home,” not specifying what device he’d used. As more questions swirled online, Pearson warned his fans that the “incriminating” piece was coming, but never said publicly whether it could be trusted.Then, two hours after Darcy’s piece went online, Pearson issued a fresh Facebook statement. “I’m not responding to fraudulent attacks on my character by the left nor RINOs,” Pearson wrote. “My friend sent me the screenshot, since I accessed my account using his phone. I saw it with my own eyes. Time to move on.”
It would seem that the young CJ Pearson has a great deal of growing up to do, which is not surprising since he’s only 13. Meanwhile, the right has what looks like a conservative hoax on their hands now to disavow.
Many right-wing outlets that were taken in by CJ’s tale have updated their posts or written new stories to include new information casting doubt on his claims.
But how many left-wing/mainstream media outlets have updated their stories on “clockmaker” Ahmed Mohamed as new information flowed in casting serious doubt on his story? None that I can see.
Rolling Stone, as recently as two days ago, featured a story pushing the widely discredited narrative that Ahmed was a “whiz kid” who invented a cool clock and was unfairly targeted because of Islamophobic school and police authorities.
The Strange Story of Ahmed Mohamed
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