EXPOSED? Governor of Iowa Accused of Using Secret X Account to Slander Trump
Republican Governor of Iowa Kim Reynolds has come under fire for allegedly using a secret, private account on X (formerly Twitter) to share her unfiltered opinions about politics, and namely, President Trump.
The account @Kimberl26890376 was created in September 2021, and its content was full of pro-DeSantis and anti-Trump posts.
In 2020, Gov. Reynolds endorsed President Trump and happily received an endorsement from his campaign. However, in 2024, she is backing Ron DeSantis.
Gov. Reynolds’ alleged alternate account has since been suspended by X.
However, backups of her posts have been documented and shared widely.
Looks like Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds’s alt X account just got suspended after it was exposed.
Don’t worry! I archived it all before she could delete her account and pretend like it was “suspended”.
I have the full archive of her alt account which she used to attack President… https://t.co/vMxMK103va pic.twitter.com/nGLx24Oqpj
— Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer) January 11, 2024
One notable post from the suspected burner account was a re-post of side-by-side comparison of a DeSantis family portrait and Trump at a party, with the caption “The contrast is overwhelming…”
See here:
Wow!!!
One of the tweets that Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds @IAGovernor retweeted from her alt account on X that I discovered is a nasty side by side pic comparing @RonDeSantis’s family with a picture of President Trump with his lawyer @AlinaHabba, @siggyflicker and other guests… https://t.co/Zjj7rD5EGt pic.twitter.com/cfYMgf2dy5
— Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer) January 11, 2024
This X account is not officially linked to Gov. Reynold’s verified X accounts. Since the story broke, Gov. Kim Reynolds has remained silent.
The New York Post was the first to make the connection between the burner X handle and Kim Reynolds. Here’s what they reported:
Not long after the calendar turned to 2024, Kim Reynolds, the Republican governor of Iowa, signed into X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, and posted about the presidential primary, where she has emerged as a key backer of Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida over former President Donald J. Trump.
But she was not posting from her publicly verified @KimReynoldsIA account. Ms. Reynolds instead used another one, @Kimberl26890376, where in recent months she has shared her unfiltered feelings on the state of affairs in the Republican primary ahead of the Iowa caucuses.
On this occasion, she reposted a DeSantis supporter’s meme. It included two photos side by side — one of Mr. DeSantis smiling with his wife and children; the other of Mr. Trump flanked by four women at his ritzy New Year’s Eve party. “The contrast is overwhelming…” the text read.
Ms. Reynolds’s little-known Twitter account straddles a line somewhere between public and private. It has her photo in the profile picture and lists the user name as “Kimberly Reynolds” (she usually goes by Kim). But it is in no way linked to either her verified political account or her official governor’s one, and it does not identify her as the governor of Iowa.
As of Thursday morning, @Kimberl26890376 had 259 followers, a sign of its obscurity, although the following included a number of influential Iowa political operatives. A person familiar with the matter confirmed it was her account. After The New York Times published this article, the account was suspended.
A spokesman for Ms. Reynolds did not respond to a request for comment.
The Washington Examiner also covered the revealing story:
Gov. Kim Reynolds (R-IA) has been vocal about her thoughts on the 2024 presidential primary and her endorsement of Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), but recently, she took to a private X account to share her opinions on former President Donald Trump and the Republican Party.
Reynolds had been posting to the personal X account @Kimberl26890376 instead of her publicly verified @KimReynoldsIA account, according to the New York Times. Under the @Kimberl26890376 account, the governor posted her unfiltered opinions regarding the nature of the GOP primary, which begins Monday with the Iowa caucuses. She was featured in the secret account’s profile picture.
In one instance, she reposted a DeSantis supporter’s meme on X that included two photos side by side of DeSantis and Trump. DeSantis’s photo showed him with his wife, Casey, and his three kids, while Trump’s photo showed the former president surrounded by four women at a New Year’s Eve party. The post was captioned, “The contrast is overwhelming.”
Several other reposts promoted DeSantis’s appearances and amplified criticism of Trump. She reposted a post from a DeSantis supporter who wrote in November, “Trump has no loyalty but demands it from everyone else. That’s FEALTY. Which makes sense because these people want a king.”
She also liked a number of pro-DeSantis, anti-Trump, and anti-former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley posts, the New York Times reported.
Why would a governor of a state have a SECRET twitter account? What is she hiding? There should be #transparency in government….of course she has a right to have a secret twitter but it does say something about her and transparency [maybe it is just a staff member???] pic.twitter.com/mwgP1K1wFG
— Greta Van Susteren (@greta) January 11, 2024
