Politics

Stephen Colbert Forced Bill Clinton to Join Twitter

The former president's Twitter philosophy? "There's nothing worse than a friendless tweeter." Well now he has close to 34,000 Twitter followers for the new account Colbert took the liberty of setting up for him: @PrezBillyJeff.

By Esther Zuckerman
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Bill Clinton's Twitter philosophy? "There's nothing worse than a friendless tweeter." Well now he has close to 34,000 Twitter followers for the new account Stephen Colbert took the liberty of setting up for him: @PrezBillyJeff. During last night's Colbert Report, filmed at the Clinton Global Initiative University meeting in St. Louis, Colbert segued a discussion of whether young people should get into politics into Clinton's social media presence. After Clinton discussed how new email was during his presidency, Colbert decided to get Clinton into the 21st Century. "Well, sir, I took the liberty of opening you a Twitter account," he said, explaining that "PresidentClinton" and "WilliamJeffersonClinton" were taken, but "PrezBillyJeff" was available. Clinton then dictated his first tweet—bizarrely aware of what would make up 140 characters. The crowd shouted at Colbert to add the hashtag:

The account has not yet been verified.

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.