@’S ALL FOLKS
Twitter worker zaps prez’s page
President Trump’s Twitter account went suddenly dark yesterday — when a rogue worker knocked it out “on the employee’s last day” on the job, the company said.
With the flip of a switch, a rogue Twitter employee managed to achieve the impossible: silence the president.
President Trump’s Twitter feed mysteriously went dark for 11 minutes Thursday after a customerservice employee on his or her final day of work at the social-media company deactivated the account, the company said.
The sudden closure of Trump’s account was originally thought to be a completely innocent tech glitch, with the company claiming that the @realdonaldtrump page was “inadvertently deactivated” through “human error” just before 7 p.m.
But the plot thickened when the company clarified, saying the act was perpetrated by a “customerservice employee who did this on the employee’s last day.”
It was unclear late Thursday who the mystery Twitterite was or what his or her possible motives might have been.
Nevertheless, the tech worker was hailed on the Web by jokesters as some sort of workingclass hero.
“Not all heroes wear capes,” tweeted Andrew William Smith. “Some just delete Trump’s twitter on their last day at work.”
Even Democratic Congressman Ted Lieu of California lavished praise on the worker, offering to buy the person a meal.
“Dear Twitter employee who shut down Trump’s Twitter: You made America feel better for 11 minutes,” Lieu tweeted. “DM [direct-message] me & I will buy you a Pizza Hut pizza.”
Some noticed a sense of calm on Twitter without Trump, who is famous for many off-the-cuff, politically incorrect messages that trigger political storms.
“I think we just came together as a nation for 23 seconds,” Madeline Hill tweeted.
One user thought the sudden disappearance of Trump’s Twitter was a good time for all the millions of users to leave the service.
“Now do all of us,” Silvia Killingsworth implored the mystery deleter.
While the president’s account was down, however, the Internet was rife with speculation about what could have caused it.
“This really did happen,” tweeted Brahm Resnik along with an image of Trump’s nonexistent account. “For about 120 seconds, @VP’s twitter was president.”
Former “Jeopardy” game-show champion and author Ken Jennings poked some fun at the presi- dent’s momentary absence.
“While Trump’s Twitter account was down, I stole every piece of china from the White House China Room,” he tweeted.
Others worried that a potential Twitter sabotage could cause a worldwide conflagration.
“Hypothetical: If a Twitter employee can delete Trump’s account, could he also impersonate him to, say, start a war? Implications are scary,” came a tweet from the account fuzzycorndog.
After the presidential account was restored, , there seemed to be some residual glitches.
The Trump feed, which normally lists tens of millions of followers, initially reported having only about 5,000 to 6,000 once it was back.