The Pentagon accidentally retweeted an activist’s tweet calling for President Donald Trump to resign. And yes, we mean that literally.
The Pentagon mistakenly retweeted a tweet calling for Trump to resign
#Deepstate?
The tweet from @ProudResister — because of course — said Trump should leave the White House due to sexual assault allegations against him, like those facing Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore and Democratic Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota.
The Defense Department’s Twitter account retweeted @ProudResister’s salvo but then almost immediately deleted it.
Col. Rob Manning, a top Pentagon spokesperson, tried to defend the mix-up by blaming it on “an authorized operator.”
“An authorized operator of the Department of Defense’s official Twitter site erroneously retweeted content that would not be endorsed by the Department of Defense,” he said. “The operator caught this error and immediately deleted it.”
But that wasn’t before many noticed what happened. And it’s worth noting that the Pentagon’s Twitter account doesn’t say retweets aren’t endorsements.
That’s the second time in as many days that the Pentagon has made a Twitter-related mistake.
On Wednesday afternoon, the military command responsible for overseeing America’s nuclear arsenal tweeted a link to an article falsely claiming that the US maintains “secret silos” for its nuclear warheads, and has “B-1 bombers that can drop them from the air.”
The problem, as experts almost immediately pointed out on Twitter, is that the US doesn’t have “secret” silos — you can find their locations on Google — and the B-1 bomber isn’t capable of dropping nuclear bombs.
And because North Korea worries about America’s nuclear program and already believes the B-1 can drop nuclear bombs, that tweet may have ratcheted the already high tensions with Pyongyang even higher.
So between yesterday and today’s Twitter mishaps, it might be time for DOD personnel to take a refresher course on social media best practices. After all, the commander-in-chief himself is a notorious Twitter obsessive.
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