The Pentagon retweeted something this past Thursday that had a lot of Twitter users scratching their head, according to The Huffington Post. The account with 5.2 million followers quickly took down the post, which called for politicians accused of sexual harassment or assault like Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore, Minnesota Sen. Al Fraken and President Donald Trump to resign.
But the internet always remembers.
The Defense Department’s official Twitter account — @deptofdefense — retweeted a comment saying Trump should resign. It’s since been unretweeted pic.twitter.com/bLA8QAo4Sc
— Dave Brown (@dave_brown24) November 16, 2017
“The solution is simple. Roy Moore: Step down from the race. Al Franken: Resign from congress, Donald Trump: Resign from the presidency. GOP: Stop making sexual assault a partisan issue,” the tweet from anti-trump activist account @ProudResister wrote. “It’s a crime as is your hypocrisy.”
Without discussing the content of the tweet, pentagon spokesperson Col. Rob Manning rushed to diffuse the situation by saying that the post, which was mistakenly retweeted by an “authorized operator” still “would not be endorsed by the Department of Defense.” According to Bloomberg Politics.
According to The Washington Post, Dana White, another spokesperson said “content that would not be endorsed by the Department of Defense,” and that the original poster “Immediately deleted it.” Fans of the account “proud resister” were quick to save screenshots and call attention to the retweet gaffe.
Woah, @ProudResister, you got retweeted by the @DeptofDefense.
The internet is forever, DoD.
And yes, @realdonaldtrump should #resign.#TheResistancehttps://t.co/YYqXBaI07z
— Rogue Wulf (@Wulfkat) November 16, 2017
This incident also followed the brief 11 minute period where President Trump’s twitter account disappeared earlier this month (due to a former employee flexing on their last day of employement, reportedly) and naturally got the Internet’s attention.