Fact Check

Did Trump Endorse a Congressional Candidate Named 'Daniel N-Word'?

A Twitter account was purportedly promoting the campaign of the Black Republican candidate from Nevada.

Published May 19, 2023

This stock photo that was used alongside the fake account was captioned on iStockPhoto simply as, "Confident businessman with arms crossed." (HRAUN/Getty Images)
This stock photo that was used alongside the fake account was captioned on iStockPhoto simply as, "Confident businessman with arms crossed." (Image Via HRAUN/Getty Images)
Claim:
In May 2023, former U.S. President Donald Trump endorsed a Black congressional candidate with a racial slur for his last name.

In mid-May 2023, a Twitter account was created with the N-word in its handle, followed by "NV03," apparently in reference to the U.S. House of Representative's seat representing Nevada's 3rd district, which covers south Las Vegas. The person who created the account pretended that it belonged to a Black Republican campaigning for the seat with a racial slur as his last name ("Daniel N-word").

In one tweet, the account wrote, "Big news: President Trump has endorsed us!"

A man named Daniel Nigger was not running for Congress in Nevada, nor was he endorsed by former US President Donald Trump.After about two days, this tweet had already been viewed more than 20,000 times.

All of this was fake — there was no such candidate with that name — and there was no indication that former U.S. President Donald Trump had anything to do with the Twitter account.

Furthermore, there was no active race for Nevada's 3rd Congressional District. Rep. Susie Lee, a Democrat, was reelected to the position in November 2022.

That said, we were curious about the origins of the image used as the account's profile photograph. We found the picture on iStockPhoto.com, and we attached it to the top of this story.

On top of that, some readers may have noticed the mention of Tennessee U.S. Rep. Andy Ogles in the righthand corner of the tweet about Trump's alleged endorsement. This appeared to mean that the person who created the fake account repurposed the picture of the former president after Ogles used it somewhere online.

It was unclear how the account with the full spelling of the racial epithet in its handle was allowed to be created on Twitter. We reached out to Twitter, via its email address for press inquiries, to ask if the account violated the platform's guidelines. In response, we immediately received an automatic reply — a pooh emoji — that all journalists were receiving from the platform in spring 2023.

It's possible that, under Twitter CEO Elon Musk's reign over the social media platform, guardrails were removed in the technology of the website that previously prevented handles with racial slurs.

Sources

@niggernv03. "Daniel Nigger for NV03." Twitter, https://twitter.com/niggernv03.

"Portrait of Confident Businessman with Arms Crossed. Male..." iStockPhoto, https://www.istockphoto.com/photo/confident-businessman-with-arms-crossed-gm1296271163-389737765.

Shivaram, Deepa. 'Nevada Democrat Rep. Susie Lee Wins Reelection to U.S. House'. NPR, 11 Nov. 2022. NPR, https://www.npr.org/2022/11/11/1133374388/susie-lee-april-becker-nevada-3rd-midterm-elections-2022-results.

'Nevada's 3rd Congressional District'. Ballotpedia, https://ballotpedia.org/Nevada%27s_3rd_Congressional_District. Accessed 19 May 2023.

Jordan Liles is a Senior Reporter who has been with Snopes since 2016.