Will The Real Bill Clinton Please Stand Up? Colbert Signs Up @PrezBillyJeff For Twitter

by Samantha Lile
Posted in Social Media 9 Apr 13
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If you thought you were following Bill Clinton on Twitter before April 8, you were wrong. The former president managed to avoid the social networking site for the past several years… until Stephen Colbert lured him onto the Twitterverse during the “Colbert Report.” Colbert signed up Clinton with the uber-presidential handle @PrezBillyJeff. Why? Because a bunch of fake Bill Clintons were already using just about every other Clintonesque handle you can think of.

Colbert even dictated Clinton’s first—and so far only—Tweet on the air:

And even though Clinton was worried no one would care what he had to say on the social network, in less than 24 hours he already had more than 81,000 followers. But that also means the thousands who followed the fake Clinton profiles now know the real deal.

Take this one for example: @BillClinton has 8,598 followers since his first Tweet last April. With Twitter gems such as these, it’s almost possible to understand how some followers fell for the ruse:

Then there’s @PimpBillClinton, whose photo depicts a winking Bill with the tagline “Hay Ladies.” OK, maybe not very realistic (or maybe it is?), but still fun for the 298,448 followers. And they’ve gotten to enjoy some classic Tweets such as:

And finally, @RealBillClinton wanted to make sure Tweeters believed he was the real deal, although only 302 people have been following classic posts like:

So now, thanks to Colbert, there can be no doubt who the real Bill Clinton is, even with the least likely handle and totally fucked-up bio, “I am President William Jefferson Billy Jeff Rodham Clinton. Stephen Colbert is my BFF.”