Following a brief deactivation of President Donald Trump’s Twitter account Thursday afternoon, the social media site released a statement, saying it was due to “human error” and later confirming that after an internal investigation.
“Earlier today @realdonaldtrump’s account was inadvertently deactivated due to human error by a Twitter employee,” the statement read. “The account was down for 11 minutes, and has since been restored. We are continuing to investigate and are taking steps to prevent this from happening again.”
In a later statement, Twitter said that a customer support employee deactivated Trump’s account on their last day at the company: “Through our investigation, we have learned that this was done by a Twitter customer support employee who did this on the employee’s last day. We are conducting a full internal review.”
Trump on Friday morning tweeted about the incident.
My Twitter account was taken down for 11 minutes by a rogue employee. I guess the word must finally be getting out-and having an impact.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 3, 2017
Twitter users had caught on to the error shortly before 4 p.m. PT on Thursday.
Has the personal Donald Trump Twitter account been deleted? pic.twitter.com/JARH9ILsPG
— Jen Chaney (@chaneyj) November 2, 2017
The account reappeared shortly thereafter. The president resumed tweeting a few hours later without acknowledging the error, writing, “Great Tax Cut rollout today. The lobbyists are storming Capital Hill, but the Republicans will hold strong and do what is right for America!”
AND IT’S BACK pic.twitter.com/fHOfRjEsby
— Adrianne Jeffries (@adrjeffries) November 2, 2017
After Twitter confirmed an exiting rogue employee was behind the deactivation, some users quickly hailed the person as a hero and legend and joked that they were someone in need of protection.
I hope we’ve all learned our lesson and can let that twitter employee remain an unnamed legend!!! Don’t fuck this up!!!
— Brandy Jensen (@BrandyLJensen) November 3, 2017
Wait…a liberal at Twitter deleted Trumps account for 11 minutes…
So this means…
Republicans and conservatives MUST BOYCOTT TWITTER!
— Tony Posnanski (@tonyposnanski) November 3, 2017
been saying this country is in desperate need of a folk hero for a while, the Trump twitter account-deleter is a good candidate
— Adam H. Johnson (@adamjohnsonNYC) November 3, 2017
The president, who has over 41 million followers, is well known for his use of the social media platform. He has been criticized for his tweets in the past, which have sometimes been used to slam the press, criticize foreign leaders, taunt North Korea and more. In May, Trump also received a lot of attention for accidentally tweeting out “covfefe,” which would go on to be one of the most publicized typos of the year.
The president has defended his use of Twitter, tweeting in July, “The FAKE & FRAUDULENT NEWS MEDIA is working hard to convince Republicans and others I should not use social media – but remember, I won the 2016 election with interviews, speeches and social media. I had to beat #FakeNews, and did. We will continue to WIN!”
