Viraldice: Trump’s Twitter Account Was Deactivated by a Rogue Twitter Employee on Last Day of Job

or 11 glorious minutes on the evening of Thursday, November 2, there was an eerie calm that fell like fog over the entire world. For those 11 minutes, Donald Trump's Twitter account was deactivated. Yes, this really happened. If you tried to find "@realdonaldtrump" on Twitter between around 6:45 p.m. and 6:56 p.m. ET, you couldn't do it. Because it wasn't there. "Sorry, that page doesn't exist!" Twitter would say when you searched for the president's page. "Don't be sorry," we would reply, hopeful that this feeling would last forever. After an investigation, it was revealed that a rogue Twitter employee deactivated the account on purpose as a triumphant salute to the universe on their last day of work. The Twitter employee has not been named, but most are calling them "hero."

Many noticed right away that the president's personal Twitter account, @realdonaldtrump, was suddenly nowhere to be found on Thursday evening.

It must have been the deafening social media silence that gave it away. Or the suddenly cheery attitudes of Twitter users everywhere. Or the tiny, hard, black pebbles in all our souls that momentarily bloomed back into flowers.

We're not sure. But one thing that seemed certain at the time was that because the deactivation wasn't announced, it probably wasn't planned in advance.

I'm not usually a person who covers the president's tweets. But. Um.

— Rachel Maddow MSNBC (@maddow) November 2, 2017

“Um,” indeed, Rachel Maddow.

“Um,” indeed.

Shortly after the account was restored and those little flowers in our souls shriveled back up, Twitter gave this explanation from their "Twitter Government" account:

Earlier today @realdonaldtrump’s account was inadvertently deactivated due to human error by a Twitter employee. The account was down for 11 minutes, and has since been restored. We are continuing to investigate and are taking steps to prevent this from happening again.

— Twitter Government (@TwitterGov) November 3, 2017

“Human error,” eh?

Why don’t we entirely believe it was an error?

Well, because it wasn't. Two hours later, Twitter updated its explanation, and folks, it's simply spectacular:

Through our investigation we have learned that this was done by a Twitter customer support employee who did this on the employee’s last day. We are conducting a full internal review. http://bit.ly/2xX089g

— Twitter Government (@TwitterGov) November 3, 2017

“This was done by a Twitter customer support employee who did this on the employee’s last day.”

The employee has not been named, and it’s unclear whether this person had quit or was fired, but either way, let’s pause for a standing ovation.

A former Twitter employee told BuzzFeed News that “a lot” of employees have the ability to suspend a user’s account, and that fewer can deactivate one. (For the record, Twitter suspension is different from deactivation. Deactivation is what happened to Trump.)

Trump addressed his temporary Twitter outage in one of his classic early-morning tweets:

My Twitter account was taken down for 11 minutes by a rogue employee. I guess the word must finally be getting out-and having an impact.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 3, 2017

Since this moment, three hours prior to the writing of this article, Trump has tweeted seven times, mentioned “Crooked Hillary,” and referred to Elizabeth Warren by his racist “Pocahontas” nickname. We’d say the word is definitely getting out there — the word of his instability and pure awfulness.

Needless to say, Twitter had some beautiful reactions to this monumental Twitter event.