Bizarre tweet appears on Donald Trump’s account during his rally speech, then disappears seconds later
Donald Trump just made one of his most bizarre Twitter posts to date, and then he deleted it seconds later. Except, wait a minute, Trump can’t possibly have posted that tweet because he’s giving a nationally televised speech at a rally as we speak. His phone isn’t in his hand, so who’s tweeting on his behalf? What was the bizarre tweet all about? And why was it deleted so quickly? We can give you at least some of those answers.
At 7:07pm eastern time, Donald Trump’s official @realdonaldtrump account on Twitter posted a one-word tweet which simply read “Epic” with nothing else said. Wait, what’s supposed to be epic? Or was this a typo and he was trying to refer to his son Eric? In any case, the one-word tweet disappeared just a few seconds later. We can’t imagine that anyone would have taken the trouble to hack Trump’s Twitter account just to post a harmless tweet like this, only to immediately delete it.
So we’re left to assume that someone on Trump’s staff posted this tweet by mistake, and then deleted it either because it was nonsensical, or because they realized everyone was going to figure out they were ghost-tweeting for Trump while he was giving a speech, or both. When Trump tweeted last week that he was on his way to Billy Graham’s funeral after it had already ended, Palmer Report raised questions about who on Trump’s remaining staff has access to his Twitter account, as one senior adviser after another has resigned. The errant Graham tweet and the errant “Epic” tweet have both taken place since Hope Hicks announced her resignation. Has Trump since given account access to someone even less qualified?
In any case, it’s now clear that one or more people on Donald Trump’s remaining White House staff have direct access to his Twitter account, and not a clue about how to use that access responsibly. Whoever posted this “Epic” tweet also doesn’t appear to understand that push notifications go out immediately on tweets, even if they’re deleted a second or two after being posted.
