As if Donald Trump doesn't give the Twitterverse enough material on his own. (Did you hear he has 20 Muslim friends?) Today Trump's recently deceased cousin Thomas P Trump was trending over an obituary in which he begs Americans not to let 'that walking mucus bag become President...'
Great turn of phrase. Trouble is, the cousin doesn't actually exist, dead or otherwise.
Maybe fake dead relatives will emerge as the next trend in political spin. If even their (fake) (dead) family won't endorse them, who will, right? It's a bit of a low blow, but legally speaking Trump can't do too much about it. There's that pesky First Amendment to contest with in the US.
Viewed under our own laws, the picture is a bit different. It's pretty defamatory to suggest that his own family hates him. Ordinarily calling Trump a mucus bag and asking people not to vote for him might qualify as an opinion, which can be defensible. But fake dead people can't have opinions, so Trump wins.
The real loser is the poor bloke whose picture got pinched and used as the fake dead cousin's face. The interweb tells us that the image was originally posted on Flickr in 2006 when a photographer met an elderly guy on some stairs and took a snap.
The photographer has had their copyright infringed. And the guy in the picture might not be too happy about being aligned with the Trump family. Or maybe he loves Donald Trump and doesn't want anyone to think he's a dirty Democrat. Either way, if people recognise him and think he's a goose as a result, he might have a case (although, if he's actually dead too, he can't sue anyone). You can totally defame someone just by using their photograph, and even without naming them. It's all about context.
It's possible we just wanted to boast that we didn't get caught out retweeting this hoax like so many others did, but it's also true that in every silly internet story there's a little legal gem eager to be told.
PS We'd show you the fake obit, but that'd be defamatory and copyrightinfringatory, which would be an irony too far.
We do not disclaim anything about this article. We're quite proud of it really.
