A prankster altered the U.S. Senate’s Wikipedia page to state that the governmental body was “dead” following the refusal of Republicans to allow witnesses to testify in the ongoing impeachment trial.
The move by conservatives lawmakers, which all but ensures that President Donald Trump will be acquitted, prompted Wikipedia user Flyboyrob2112 to make numerous changes to the Senate’s description.
The alterations not only declared the Senate deceased but labeled Trump as “a corrupt autocrat” as well.
“The United States Senate was formerly the upper chamber of the United States Congress, which, along with the United States House of Representatives ― the lower chamber ― comprised the legislature of the United States,” the description begins. “It died on January 31, 2020, when senators from the Republican Party refused to stand up to a corrupt autocrat calling himself the president of the United States, refusing to hear testimony that said individual blackmailed Ukraine in order to cheat in the 2020 presidential election.”
As noted by HuffPost, the user changed the page at least four times, with each edit surviving for roughly one minute before being changed back to the original phrasing.
A Twitter user by the name of Bruce Halperin claimed to be behind the Flyboyrob2112 username and took credit for the changes on Friday.
“I made some edits to Wikipedia this morning,” Halpersin said alongside numerous hashtags.
https://twitter.com/BruceHalperin/status/1223316704408694784
The impeachment proceedings stem from a July 2019 phone call, in which Trump is accused of asking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden in exchange for security aid.
Wikipedia has long been a political battleground where edits are frequently made to the pages of politicians and the like.
In just one incident, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) had her personal Wikipedia page edited in 2018 to state that she was a “traitor to women.”
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