President Donald Trump’s Twitter account, @realdonaldtrump, disappeared from the site for around 11 minutes shortly before 7PM ET.
In a series of tweets issued by Twitter’s Government and Elections team, the company first blamed “human error,” then attributed the move on a rogue employee who used their last day on the job to boot the president off the service.
Earlier today @realdonaldtrump’s account was inadvertently deactivated due to human error by a Twitter employee. 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.
— Twitter Government (@TwitterGov) November 3, 2017
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. https://t.co/mlarOgiaRF
— Twitter Government (@TwitterGov) November 3, 2017
It was unclear how a “costumer support” worker had obtained clearance to deactivate such a high-profile account. The president has tweeted more than 36,000 times and has nearly 42 million Twitter followers.
The company has in the past suspended other accounts for violating its terms and conditions. The company has resisted calls from those opposed to the president to delete his account.
A spokesperson for the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Trump did not immediately address the outage after his account was reactivated. Instead, he tweeted about the GOP tax plan.
“Great Tax Cut rollout today. The lobbyists are storming Capital [sic] Hill, but the Republicans will hold strong and do what is right for America!”
Great Tax Cut rollout today. The lobbyists are storming Capital Hill, but the Republicans will hold strong and do what is right for America!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 3, 2017
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