Mysterious State Department Message Claiming Trump’s Presidency Will End Tonight Confounds Twitter: Do They ‘Know Something We Don’t?’
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A mysterious message on the State Department’s official website sent Twitter into a frenzy on Monday afternoon.
The message claimed President Donald Trump’s term in the White House would end on January 11, more than a week early.
“Donald J. Trump’s term ended on 2021-01-11 19:39:28,” the message said, using military time to denote 7:39 p.m.
If you search the https://t.co/J0mI7ov8Xm site you can see that this “glitch” seems to have happened before… pic.twitter.com/4IF4FGuS1Y
— Olivier Knox (@OKnox) January 11, 2021
Reporting later shed some more light on the bizarre incident. Sources told BuzzFeed Monday afternoon that a disgruntled staffer was behind the message. Tension in the State Department has been high following Wednesday’s violent attack on the Capitol. Career foreign and civil service officers submitted a cable to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo through the department’s “dissent channel” after the incident, asking him to support invoking the 25th Amendment to remove the president.
The message was up for nearly an hour. (Visitors to the page are now being in that the page is having “technical difficulties.”) And in that time, speculation ran rampant on Twitter:
Ummm. This state department website says…
“Donald J. Trump’s term ended on 2021-01-11 19:40:41.”
That’s tonight at 7:40pm ET. Do they know something we don’t know? Hack? Prankster?
https://t.co/BtGT5Tk8QP— Nick Knudsen ?? (@NickKnudsenUS) January 11, 2021
Just was told that State Department site stating that the Trump’s presidency is ending tonight was meant as a joke. A bad one apparently. https://t.co/R7W23rF2zk
— Andrew C Laufer, Esq (@lauferlaw) January 11, 2021
Some random staffer at the State Department before they messed with the site: pic.twitter.com/DiUvjT26B4
— philip lewis (@Phil_Lewis_) January 11, 2021
Why would you think the State Department would feel the need to immediately inform the IT staffers who run the website about extremely sensitive news?
“My God, the president is resigning. Call the Help Desk! Get them to update the bio page on the website STAT!”
— Alex Seitz-Wald (@aseitzwald) January 11, 2021
me to state department website pic.twitter.com/RJBJkoRaeA
— rat king (@MikeIsaac) January 11, 2021
software engineer here to explain what’s going on with the state department’s website right now. here’s what’s up: literally no single person has any idea how a website works and they’re all varying degrees of broken
— brian feldman (@bafeldman) January 11, 2021
Does the State Dept know something we don’t? pic.twitter.com/7ZJdCIj7H4
— Jason K. Morrell (@CNNJason) January 11, 2021
Lots of questions about these bio pages on the State Department website right now. https://t.co/TvGQZ9vxRM
— Gio Benitez (@GioBenitez) January 11, 2021
Uhh… either the State Department was hacked or they know something we don’t. https://t.co/kKxdFQfOvE pic.twitter.com/1uwnmd0CTK
— Josh Jordan (@NumbersMuncher) January 11, 2021
Hey State Department, do you know when Adele’s next album is coming out?
— Frank Pallotta (@frankpallotta) January 11, 2021
House Democrats planned on Monday to vote on a resolution that evening similarly calling on Trump’s Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment, and to push for the president’s impeachment on Tuesday if the effort fails. To date, Trump has expressed no intention of resigning.
