Twitter briefly deactivated Trump’s account

Twitter apologized Thursday night after a departing employee briefly deactivated President Donald Trump’s account. “Earlier today @realdonaldtrump’s account was inadvertently deactivated due to human error by a Twitter employee,” Twitter wrote in a statement. “We are continuing to investigate and are taking steps to prevent this from happening again.” The error sparked new questions about who has access to the president’s Twitter account, which he uses daily to release statements, announce policy, and comment on the news of the day. This week, Twitter and other social media companies testified before three congressional panels about what role they played in enabling Russian propaganda during the 2016 presidential election. Twitter told lawmakers it identified at least 2,752 accounts used by Russians and found more than 36,000 bots that combined to broadcast 1.4 million messages during the 2016 election cycle. The president started his personal account in March 2009. He’s tweeted more than 36,000 times and amassed 41.7 million followers. Trump responded to the breach Friday morning with a tweet: “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.”