Why did a 13-year-old conservative star apparently hoax the White House?

CPT Ahmed Faried — Sat, 26 Sep 2015 20:06:30 -0400

CJ Pearson is a conservative darling. He is also a teens for Ted Cruz President and naturally he is also very much anti- President Obama. A few weeks ago he claimed that the White House blocked his twitter account because he had insulted the President. Naturally his supporters believed him without question. It turns out it was a hoax.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/09/25/why-did-a-13-year-old-conservative-star-apparently-hoax-the-white-house/

Excerpt:

"At first, no one questioned this. Twitchy, the conservative site that aggregates Twitter wars, reported that the White House was "afraid of a 13-year-old boy." The Daily Caller matter-of-factly reported that Pearson had been blocked, as did Breitbart, as did other conservative news sites. White House assistant press secretary Frank Benenati swiftly tweeted that Pearson was wrong, and that "nobody is or has ever been blocked from the @POTUS twitter account." That sent skeptics looking for cases where the account had blocked hostile accounts, and it inspired a new video from Pearson — which would be viewed half a million times — denouncing the White House for lying about him.

"They lied about Benghazi," he said, in high dudgeon. "They lied about the IRS. They lie about every issue of importance to the American people."

But other online sleuths could tell that something was off. First, a subsequent Pearson tweet revealed that he was still following @BarackObama. Second, there was no timestamp or external information on the tweet, and the kerning on the standard text "learn more" was skewed. Coincidentally, a popular parody account had previously tweeted an identical image (now deleted) of an Obama "blocking," with the same kerning.

Oliver Darcy, a reporter for the Blaze, dug into all of this and contacted Pearson. The wunderkind initially told him that he'd taken the shot on a Droid tablet. In the video, Pearson had claimed that he saw the blocking when he "got home," not specifying what device he'd used. As more questions swirled online, Pearson warned his fans that the "incriminating" piece was coming, but never said publicly whether it could be trusted.

Then, two hours after Darcy's piece went online, Pearson issued a fresh Facebook statement. "I'm not responding to fraudulent attacks on my character by the left nor RINOs," Pearson wrote. "My friend sent me the screenshot, since I accessed my account using his phone. I saw it with my own eyes. Time to move on."

Benji Backer watched the events unfold with disgust. After a short conversation, he pointed to the tweetstorm he'd written after reading the Blaze piece, about how "young conservatives have made the movement look foolish." He wasn't a part of that, but he knew Pearson was headed for a fall.

"I tried to give CJ advice," Backer wrote. "And I know he's going to lash out at me now. But we used to work together. I told him he had promise but that he had to keep it in perspective, truth [sic] and stay humble. Stardom can ruin those things and it did for him. CJ & I (when I was still in politics) were going to work on some things. But he didn't like advice and he wanted 'his brand' to grow instead. People, including myself, tried to help CJ. I really thought he could do great things. But he wasn't willing to listen. Most of all, CJ lied to me. Numerous times. And many people I know and love. That's when I knew there was a problem."

EDIT:
I know the title makes no sense since he didn't hoax the White House but rather his supporters. But I'll leave it as is until WaPo makes the edit on their end.