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Can We Talk About The Fact That Jimmy Kimmel Doesn't Understand How Twitter Works?

Photo: Patrick Wymore/ABC.
Not surprisingly, Jimmy Kimmel didn't shy away from political jabs during his hosting gig at last night's Oscars. One of his most talked about moments was an expression of faux-concern for Donald Trump's wellbeing over the lack of tweets from the president about the broadcast. His response? To check in with Trump via Twitter during a live segment. But the hilarity of the joke overshadowed the fact that Kimmel seemed a bit confused about how Twitter actually works.
After Trump's Twitter response to Meryl Streep's strongly worded Golden Globes speech, all eyes were on @realDonaldTrump to see what he might have to say during the 89th Academy Awards (despite the fact that press secretary Sean Spicer had reported that Trump would not be watching the show). When there was nothing, Kimmel jumped at the opportunity.
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"You know, we're more than two hours into the show and Donald Trump still hasn't tweeted at us once?" Kimmel told the crowd. "And I'm starting to get worried about him."
Kimmel proceeded to send two trolling tweets to Trump, one checking in to see if he was still awake, another mentioning Streep. But here's where things went a little off-script. Kimmel seemed confused about why his tweets at Trump weren't showing up on Trump's account.
"We don't see what's up there, do we?" He said, looking at @realDonaldTrump's profile page on his phone screen. He was concerned that his posts weren't actually going through, and concluded with a swift "we'll figure it out" before moving on to announcing the next presenters.
Kimmel seemed unaware that when you mention someone in a tweet, using @username, the tweet isn't posted to their profile page. It only appears on your own, as Kimmel's tweet did.
Can you imagine what Donald Trump's Twitter page would look like if every single person's mention of him showed up? It might self-destruct from the sheer number of tweets.
Maybe Jimmy Kimmel's team handles his Twitter for him. Or maybe he had a momentary lapse of memory on-stage. Either way, he can celebrate one personal milestone: His first tweet at Trump is now Kimmel's most retweeted tweet of all time. (Although he still has a ways to go if he wants to surpass Ellen Degeneres' memorable Oscars tweet.)
And for those wondering: No, @realDonaldTrump still hasn't weighed in on any of last night's powerful speeches.

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