Donald Trump boasted in
a tweet that Jeb Bush failed to renew his domain registration, enabling Trump's
campaign to redirect it to Trump's web site. In early February 2016,
JebBush.com redirected to the web site of Donald Trump. Trump tweeted boasting
about the redirect; the Trump campaign appeared to be responsible. Who was
responsible for the redirection. On 15 February 2016, social media users began
sharing the above-reproduced tweet. On first glance, it appeared to be a boast
from Donald Trump about registering JebBush.com because Bush's campaign
"forgot to renew" the domain. However, the tweet didn't appear
anywhere on Trump's recent Twitter feed, and the image clearly showed a handle
of @P0TUSTrump, not Trump's known Twitter handle of @RealDonaldTrump. The tweet
was visible on the account @P0TUSTrump, dated 6 January 2016: It wasn't clear
whether Bush ever maintained a web presence at JebBush.com; no cached copies
were available through web archive sites. Domain registration records indicated
that the Trump campaign wasn't necessarily linked to the prank: Ultimately, it
was true JebBush.com redirected to Donald Trump's web site. But Trump didn't
brag about the redirect on Twitter, nor was he likely responsible for it.
Finally, it didn't appear Bush's campaign ever maintained a web site at
JebBush.com for any parties to specifically "take over." It wasn't
clear who specifically registered the domain, set up the redirect to Trump's
site, or why they did so.
