Trump's Twitter account was gone for 11 minutes. Photo / Twitter
President Trump has responded to his Twitter account being suspended by a worker, saying it shows his message must be "having an impact."
"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," he tweeted early Friday morning, news.com.au reports.
He then resumed his usual programming with a second tweet saying: "Everybody is asking why the Justice Department (and FBI) isn't looking into all of the dishonesty going on with Crooked Hillary & the Dems."
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
Everybody is asking why the Justice Department (and FBI) isn't looking into all of the dishonesty going on with Crooked Hillary & the Dems..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 3, 2017
Earlier Twitter said the President'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," it tweeted. "We are continuing to investigate and are taking steps to prevent this from happening again."
It didn't take long for praise to pour in for the employee's actions.
Now that's what I call customer support. Well done, departed employee; please accept this toast and the thanks of a grateful nation.
— Felina (@FelinaBlanc) November 3, 2017
Can we celibate him or her as a international hero? Maybe a statue in the U.N.?
— Johan Melander (@thea3u) November 3, 2017
An American hero! pic.twitter.com/pH1qINyaPA
— Indomitable Wisdom (@alyse_wisdom) November 3, 2017
The disappearance of Mr Trump's account caused a frenzy online.
About 10am AEDT those who went on to the US President's page got an error message saying: "Sorry, that page doesn't exist".
But just a few minutes later it reappeared. Mr Trump's Twitter did not acknowledge the temporary disappearance and later posted a tweet about tax cuts.
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
— TwitterGov (@TwitterGov) November 3, 2017
About half an hour earlier, Mr Trump had tweeted a video about his nomination of Jerome Powell to be the next chairman of the Federal Reserve.
He had also posted a number of tweets about the move of Broadcom headquarters back to the US and the cancellation of the diversity visa lottery program following the New York truck rampage.
Overnight Mr Trump drew criticism for his comments that the alleged driver should be sent to Guantánamo Bay detention camp and get the death penalty.
The disappearance of Mr Trump's account sparked speculation about whether it was deleted by Twitter or if the President did it himself. Some simply rejoiced in the President's brief absence from social media.
did.... did Twitter just delete Donald Trump's account? https://t.co/nfv0stKdA7 pic.twitter.com/26H1qgaO2H
— Josh Butler (@JoshButler) November 2, 2017
We’ll all remember where we were during the 10 minutes of peace while Donald Trump’s Twitter account was down.
— Mike Drucker (@MikeDrucker) November 2, 2017
#donaldtrump is off twitter and all of twitter's like: pic.twitter.com/hr0oPdTueF
— Carie Gladding (@cariegladding) November 2, 2017
Many people have been hoping this was true for a long time...#DonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/rW9bHtt2Qt
— Tim Rosen (@timrosen35) November 2, 2017
Others blamed left wing supporters for censoring free speech.
The biggest story here is that the left all had orgasms over free speech being censored. What does that tell you? https://t.co/qsNCMRzToA
— Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) November 3, 2017