Remember that time someone added a picture of House Speaker Paul Ryan to the Wikipedia entry for “Villain”?
This is sort of like that. But this time, a user took advantage of Wikipedia’s free-for-all editing privileges to add President Donald Trump to the “President of the Confederate States of America” entry.
Oppstn.com editor Jordan Uhl pointed out the addition in a tweet Tuesday.
Someone updated the list of Confederate presidents on Wikipedia pic.twitter.com/lKfW7Ov1ao
— jordan (@JordanUhl) August 16, 2017
Although the page’s edit history shows the Trump entry was removed by early Wednesday morning, it lives on in a screengrab.
The entry, which added Trump as the second Confederate president after Jefferson Davis, listed Trump’s term of office from Aug. 15, 2017 to the present. It also included a fake link to the “Confederate States of the Accidental Election, 2017.” Trump’s previous office was written as “Never Served in Public Office from Nowhere.”
The edits came on the heels of the weekend’s white nationalist rally that turned violent in Charlottesville, Virginia. Trump has faced criticism for making contradictory comments on the protests. His latest statements blamed “both sides” for the violence and condemned the “alt-left.”
Around the same time Tuesday, new edits appeared on the Wikipedia page for the Grand Wizard, the title given to leaders of the Ku Klux Klan.
https://twitter.com/DanDupree11/status/897618421399134213
The page was edited to say the KKK “existed from 1865 to 2017” instead of “from 1865 to 1869” and added a paragraph that named Trump as the current leader.
“Thanks to the 45th President of the United States/ The current Grand Wizard Donald J. Trump. The Nazi/KKK movement has new life. Sad!”
The edits were removed within 30 minutes.
