Departing employee deactivates Trump's micro-blogging account, twitterati hail hero
US President Donald Trump’s @realdonaldtrump Twitter account was deactivated by a Twitter Inc employee who was leaving the company on Thursday and was down for 11 minutes before it was restored, the social media company said.
“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,” Twitter said in a tweet.
“We are continuing to investigate and are taking steps to prevent this from happening again,” the company said in an earlier tweet.
A Twitter representative declined to comment further.
The White House did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
Trump has made extensive use of messages on Twitter to attack his opponents and promote his policies both during the 2016 presidential campaign and since taking office in January. He has 41.7 million followers on Twitter.
“Great Tax Cut rollout today. The lobbyists are storming Capital Hill, but the Republicans will hold strong and do what is right for America!” he wrote in his first tweet after Thursday’s outage.
Twitter Chief Executive Jack Dorsey’s account was briefly suspended as a result of what he said was an internal mistake in a similar incident last November.
Twitterati soon took to the micro-blogging site to put forward their views:
One The Seuss is Loose penned a poem,
Trump's Twitter was down
— The Seuss is Loose (@SeussIsLoose_) November 3, 2017
We've heard the news;
Inadvertently deactivated
Was the term Twitter used.
But why inadvertent?
Why not make it for keeps?
And spare us dangers
His account daily reaps?
So @twitter, how ‘bout it?
Make it right:
Delete @realDonaldTrump
For good tonight
While, another, Ed Krassentein found politicla humor in it,
Trump's Twitter account was deactivated for 11 minutes. For 11 minutes America declared its independence from Russia.
— Ed Krassenstein (@EdKrassen) November 3, 2017
And another wanted to immortalise the employee,
Making a kickstarter to tear down a confederate monument and put up a statue of this ex Twitter employee https://t.co/X1Ajh67qD7
— Emily Kirkpatrick (@kirkpate) November 3, 2017
And another, offered him a job,
If I saw on a resume, "Deactivated Trump's Twitter account." That person is getting hired immediately. https://t.co/7m7mJ2dIXi
— Jesse Kim (@jckim206) November 3, 2017
Others reacted too,
Twitter almost did something right for a change, then apologized profusely for it. https://t.co/1byYibIxX2
— Thorne Melcher (@ExistentialEnso) November 3, 2017
And the ex-twitter employee got a marriage proposal as well!
how do i tell my parents im marrying the twitter employee?
— ground beef baby (@geekylonglegs) November 3, 2017
And finally, many hailed him as a national hero.
no gods, no masters, no heroes. except for that former twitter employee who deactivated trumps account on his last day.
— 🌜🌀mr🎃de🌹 R2-DSâ'¶2 (@GeneMachina) November 3, 2017
I do not know who this Twitter employee is, but he/she/they are a national hero. https://t.co/5QVzxe5Pd5
— Howdy Danielle 🙋🻠(@HowdyDanielle) November 3, 2017
This person should become a celebrity. https://t.co/Hfaf52FlTO
— elissa taub (@ejtaub) November 3, 2017