Twitter employee blamed for deleting Trump's account

With the push of a button, an employee at Twitter accomplished for a brief few minutes on Thursday what President Trump's closest advisors have reportedly been trying unsuccessfully to do for months: shut down the seemingly never-ending tweet stream at @realDonaldTrump.

Perhaps it was an act of civil disobedience, or maybe just a "take this job and shove it" moment, but shortly before 7 p.m., the president's personal account kicked back the error message "does not exist." By 7:03 p.m., it was up and running again and within about a half-hour, new presidential tweets were forthcoming.

The folks at Twitter leapt into action to find out what had happened:

A spokesperson for the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment, according to The Associated Press.

Not surprisingly, the brief outage has spawned an amusing array of reactions.