Boris Johnson’s ‘Congratulations’ Message To Biden Was Originally Addressed To Trump

The ‘congratulations’ message Prime Minister Boris Johnson tweeted to President-elect Joe Biden appears to have been originally addressed to Donald Trump. 

Johnson posted a statement on Twitter after the US election was called on November 7, in which he expressed his congratulations to Biden ‘on his election as President of the United States’ and to vice president Kamala Harris for ‘her historic achievement’.

The post was shared a little more than an hour after the race was called, so the website Guido Fawkes took a closer to look at the message to investigate why it might have taken so long to be released.

The site noted that behind the congratulatory statement, a different message was faintly visible. The message clearly features the word ‘Trump’, suggesting Downing Street were anticipating the Republican candidate to win a second term.

Guido Fawkes suggests two separate congratulatory images were not prepared in advance, so the one addressed to Trump was quickly altered after the race was called. Unfortunately, whoever was in charge of designing the message failed to completely remove Trump’s name.

The message to Trump appears to be in a smaller font size, indicating the statement was longer, and features phrases such as ‘Trump on his’, ‘second term’ and ‘on the future of this’. The message becomes more clear when the contrast and brightness levels of the image are adjusted.

Take a closer look below:

After the revelation was shared online, one Twitter user double-checked the discovery and confirmed that they found the same thing, writing, ‘I’ve checked this against The PM’s own Twitter account and it appears to be correct and I’m completely flabbergasted.’

Anyone who’s vaguely familiar with technology will know that it’s not particularly difficult to create a post of the type Johnson shared online. It wouldn’t take much Photoshop knowledge, and could have even been achieved through features on Instagram, Snapchat, or Microsoft Paint, if you’re really desperate.

It seems to me that going to the effort of trying to remove an old message before creating a new one over the top would have actually been more work than starting from scratch, but perhaps the stress of trying to get the message out quickly just made all common sense go out the window.

Johnson hasn’t acknowledged the disastrous mistake, but I’m sure social media users will make him aware of it.

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