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Trump Reportedly Fed Mussolini Quote By Gawker Twitter Bot

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS NEWS) -- Donald Trump has been coming under fire for retweeting a quote from Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini on Twitter--and it turns out the whole thing was an elaborate setup by Gawker.

In a Sunday post on Gawker's website, the news organization explains how one staffer created a Twitter bot account that periodically tweeted out quotes from Mussolini and attributed them to Trump. The account has tweeted multiple times a day, only at Trump, since December 2015. (Its photo is a picture of Mussolini photoshopped with Trump's hair.)

"We came up with the idea for that Mussolini bot under the assumption that Trump would retweet just about anything, no matter how dubious or vile the source, as long as it sounded like praise for himself," the story said.

Read the full story on CBS News.

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