Meet the man who tweets for Trump

Dan Scavino's work is known the world over. Photo / Wikicommons

It is 2.46am on US election night, November 2016.

The video shows Donald Trump hovering behind a curtain, waiting to take the stage and celebrate his most unlikely of presidential victories with supporters.

All his most prominent allies are there - sons Donald jnr and Eric, wife Melania and campaign chiefs Kellyanne Conway and Steve Bannon.

So too is the man shooting the backstage footage, unseen by the camera but among the few dozen present for this moment of history: Dan Scavino.

Few people have heard of Scavino. But his work is known most of the world over.

As White House social media director, he is one of the few people with access to the President's Twitter, Facebook and Instagram accounts - and is thus rumoured to be the man behind Trump's tweets.

The White House pushes back on suggestions that Trump does not write all his own tweets, but figures in the inner circle have suggested otherwise to the Daily Telegraph.

"There are a lot of folks who say he's the actual guy who does a lot of the tweets and pushing of the button," said one Trump Administration source.

Scavino, who is in his early 40s, is credited with many of the likes and retweets from Trump's Twitter account, @realDonaldTrump which has 51 million followers.

One occasion on October 4 made headlines.

Scavino, who himself has 478,000 followers on Twitter, posted: "NBC news is #FakeNews and more dishonest than even CNN. They are a disgrace to good reporting. No wonder their news ratings are way down!"

Moments later, Trump tweeted the exact same message.

Scavino's original tweet was rapidly deleted, but not before it was picked up by the US media.

Fellow Trump camp figures describe Scavino as a "brash", goofy man who hangs around meetings to "take pictures" and connect the President to his voters rather than give strategic guidance.

"It seems like he kind of has carte blanche over what he can do," one Trump Administration figure said.

Trump’s former golf caddie earns $180k as the White House social media director. Here’s a piece about what he actually does - and how much he crafts the president’s tweets. https://t.co/l3b4Jn3LmI

— Ben Riley-Smith (@benrileysmith) April 29, 2018