State Department website bizarrely appears to claim that Donald Trump is resigning tonight
As we speak, Congress is proceeding with impeachment, a tool which can result in the removal of Donald Trump. There is also enormous pressure on Vice President Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment and remove Trump immediately. Now, within this surreal context, the U.S. State Department has made a bizarre change to its website.
As of right now, 3:15pm eastern time, Donald Trump’s page on the State Department website says that “Donald J. Trump’s term ended on 2021-01-11 19:49:00.” Perhaps the page will soon be changed or taken down, but we have a screen capture just in case. To be clear, 2021-01-11 is today.
To be clear, there’s a very strong likelihood that this is a typo or website glitch, or that someone at the State Department is just punking Trump, and that his term isn’t really ending today. But within the current climate of so many people trying to remove Trump from office, at least some people are going to interpret this as meaning that Trump is resigning at 7:49pm tonight, and that it’s already mistakenly been made public. We doubt that’s the case, but it’s still surreal given the circumstances. Update, 3:30pm: BuzzFeed is now reporting that a disgruntled State Department staffer is behind the change to the website.
