Trump’s Twitter account deleted and social media explodes with comedy, concern and conspiracies

Thursday night, Donald Trump’s personal Twitter account (@readDonaldTrump) disappeared for eleven minutes.

Image: Screen grab from Twitter

Following the brief vanishing act, the account reappeared and then Twitter started explaining…sort of.

Image: Screen grab

Both the removal and return sparked a flurry of online activity and questions.

Former Hillary Clinton spokesperson Brian Fallon used the outage to take a shot at the president.

Democratic Congressman Ted Lieu wanted to award the responsible party with a pizza from Pizza Hut. (Really? Really, congressman…Pizza Hut?)

This account wanted the “deleter” rewarded with a Nobel Prize.

Several people had fun speculating on the identity of the rogue employee.

Other folks believed this would be a significant moment in their lives, something to be remembered.

Some found the celebration of the removal to reveal the anti-Trumpers lack of appreciation of free speech.

About three hours after the incident, Twitter posted a little more news, announcing it was a customer service employee who was responsible. An “internal review” is underway. (Wanna bet someone gets a call or an invitation to testify at a hearing in D.C.?)

Curiously, there were no tweets from late night comedy hosts (and frequent Trump critics) like Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon and Stephen Colbert. This is probably because the incident occurred in the early evening, after those shows normally finish recording for the night.

Follow Mike Opelka on Twitter – @stuntbrain