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William

Source: Bly Holte / Instagram

On Tuesday one of the most bizarre social media stories took place after users pieced together that Patti LaBelle’s nephew-son William “Bly” Holte, might actually be a staunch Trump supporter.

Now at this point you’re going to have to pay attention because the twist and turns this takes just simply can’t be made up.

Dan Browning, a white Republican who ran and lost his bid for a congressional seat in Pennsylvania during the primary, tweeted the following from his account which has since been deleted:

“I’m a gay Black guy and I can personally say that Obama did nothing for me, my life only changed a little bit and it was for the worse. Everything is so much better under Trump though. I feel respected – which I never do when democrats are involved,” it read.

Not too far after, the tweet went viral because who wouldn’t be confused about a white, married, Republican man, claiming to speak as though he were a gay, Black man?!

Twitter then began clowning Browning, informing him that he may have forgotten to log off out of his burner/troll account before he pressed “send.”

But it gets weirder.

Of course Browning noticed that his mentions were in shambles and explained that he meant to retweet a DM from a Black constituent and failed because he didn’t give the tweet any context.

“Regarding the tweet that is going viral from my account — I was quoting a message that I received earlier this week from a follower. Sorry if context was not clear. Trump received record minority votes & record LGBTQ votes. Many people won’t say it vocally, but do in private.”

So while that may have explained the mix up, folks began digging further.

It was discovered that an account named @DanPurdy323 may have been the originator of the, “I’m a Black gay guy,” quote, so of course Twitter proceeded to dig for receipts in an effort to uncover who was behind the @DanPurdy323 page.

Users also pointed out that the Dan Purdy account regularly retweets disinformation from White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany, and Donald Trump Jr, as well as tweets from Browning. The page was created in October 2020 and also tweeted illegitimate claims about voter fraud and conspiracy theories about Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden.

As this was going on, the account posted a video showing a Black man who claimed to be Purdy, who notably resembled Bly Holte, Patti LaBelle’s nephew. Holte and his sister were adopted by their iconic aunt after Patti’s sister Jackie Holte died in the late 1980’s.

“Hey guys, my name is Dan Purdy, and I am indeed a gay Black man,” the man states in the now deleted video. “The message that you saw on Dean’s Twitter was posted, I don’t actually know how it was posted, but I did send it to him because I had a problem with how people of my race and sexual persuasion are treating Donald Trump.

“I don’t have a problem with Donald Trump on those levels. And I don’t understand why so many pretend to.,” he continued. “Donald Trump has never done anything to hurt me, either as a gay man, or as a Black man, nor has he done anything to hurt anybody in the four years that that he’ been in office because he hasn’t had time to. So what’s the big deal? I sent that message to Dean, Dean accidentally posted it somehow and that’s the end of the story. No he’s not a sock puppet, no I’m not a bot. I hope you understand.”

The New York Times discovered that Holte is a follower of Candace Owens for President for 2024, and runs an anti-feminist blog on Medium, where he wrote an essay titled, “Garbage Feminism and Television.”

Twitter has suspended the @DanPurdy322 account as part of an investigation as well as another account which was reportedly owned by Holte, @IncrediByl.

A third account which is still up and running named @byl322 has images of who appears to be Holte. In one of the photos posted last year, Holte is pictured with Patti LaBelle, while the caption reads, “Me and Aunt Patti.”

 

I’m going to go lay down now because this whole uncovering really made my head hurt.

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