Pentagon retweets post demanding Trump step down
The Defense Department admitted Thursday that its press operation had “erroneously” retweeted a message calling for the resignations of President Donald Trump and Senator Al Franken.
The tweet was quickly un-retweeted, but not before being noticed by Twitter users that follow the Pentagon account.
One of the people operating the DoD’s Twitter account was at fault according to a quick explanation issued by the Pentagon.
An authorized operator of the @DeptofDefense’s official Twitter site erroneously retweeted content that would not be endorsed by the Department of Defense. The operator caught this error and immediately deleted it.
— Jonathan Hoffman (@ChiefPentSpox45) November 16, 2017
It’s impossible to know exactly how the operator “erroneously” retweeted a militant anti-Trump account, but an educated guess might be that the person follows Proud Resister on their personal Twitter account, uses something like Tweetdeck or Hootsuite to manage multiple accounts and accidentally retweeted from their personal account to the DoD account (yes, that can happen.) The DoD’s chief spokesperson is a civilian, Ms. Dana White, and the “operator” may also be non-military and therefore explain the lack of attention to detail and disregard for the commander-in-chief. Ms. White also served on John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign team.
It certainly appears that this type of “erroneous” tweets are becoming the new norm marching just ahead of the “fake news”, taking a piece of national security with it. Of course these ‘accidents’ have been happening for decades , so while they’re not new, they seem to occur more frequently this past year. Admittedly. the Obama era left me much more jaded and cynical, still…… Be inadvertent, carelessness, deliberate or incompetence ….it needs to stop!! Let’s not forget that these participants have supervisors that are supposed to be accountable as well.