Californian bombarded after Trump shares wrong number for Michigan lawmaker
A California resident confirmed they had been bombarded with calls and texts after the campaign team for Donald Trump erroneously shared the Michigan native’s phone number instead of that for a Michigan state senator.
In the president’s latest attempt to overturn the results of the presidential election, campaign officials called on Twitter and Facebook users to contact the Michigan state senate majority leader, Mike Shirkey, and former state house speaker Lee Chatfield to decertify its presidential election ballets and threaten Joe Biden’s victory. Biden won the state by more than 150,000 votes.
The campaign posted what they believed to be Chatfield’s phone number. Instead, they had mistakenly given the phone number for O Rose, who goes by a shortened first name. Rose told the Petoskey News-Review their phone began ringing nonstop soon after.
“I told them I was not Lee Chatfield, but they would still not believe me,” they said. “It was just a string of people progressively denying reality.”
The post also misidentified Chatfield as the current speaker. Still, Trump re-shared it to more than 35 million followers on his own Facebook page, amplifying the incorrect contact information for his angry supporters. Rose later confirmed to the Washington Post they received thousands of calls and text messages from outraged Trump voters across the country.
“My phone can’t even take it anymore. It’s breaking,” they said. “I was getting so many calls it was impossible to do anything with my phone.”
Rose learned of the error after a friend of their father, who believed they had contacted the Michigan state representative, sent them a text instead. At times, Rose attempted to politely correct misinformed callers, but many became aggressive, they said.
Soon, Rose said they were receiving photos of rabbits, pie recipes and threats. A screenshot shared with the News-Review showed Rose responding that “this is NOT representative Lee’s number” to a user, adding they are “a random citizen”.
After being reassured the wrong numbers was posted by the Trump campaign, the sender replied “so you say”.
“They still think I’m [Chatfield] and keep trying to tell me what they want and they say, ‘I’m sending this to the president!’” Rose told the Post.
Contacting the Trump campaign to have the posts removed has proven unsuccessful, but Rose has also since sent messages to Chatfield’s Facebook page. Despite the efforts, the original posts questioning the legitimacy of the election remain up.
“I’m being personally affected by a decision that [the Trump team] made without fact-checking, and that’s the silliest thing I’ve ever heard,” Rose added, confirming plans tochange their phone number.
A native of a Petoskey, Michigan, the former customer service representative relocated to the west coast to escape the midwest, saying “it still follows me, apparently”.