NEW YORK _ President Donald Trump did a digital vanishing act Thursday evening.
The commander in chief's personal Twitter account _ @realDonaldTrump _ abruptly disappeared Thursday, leaving his 41.7 million followers scrambling to figure out what happened and why. When people tried to look at his account, a Twitter message said, "Sorry, that page doesn't exist!"
Conspiracy theories _ and punchlines _ piled up in the wake of Trump's disappearance.
"If Trump's Twitter is down, does this technically mean he's no longer POTUS?" asked author John Schindler. "I mean, it's the only part of the job he pays attention to."
"Wait, Trump's twitter account has disappeared. Is this how we do coups now?" joked New Republic editor Jeet Heer.
But the speculation ended after a matter of minutes when the president's account reappeared on the popular social media site.
Even when it was back up and running, there appeared to be glitches. Trump's account initially showed that he only had a measly 4,210 followers. But the number eventually showed the correct 41.7 million.
Three hours later, Twitter 'fessed up to say it had erred.
"Earlier today @realdonaldtrump's account was inadvertently deactivated due to human error by a Twitter employee," the company said in a tweet. "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."
A White House spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the glitch with the account _ which has become Trump's favored method of communicating with the public and knocking his foes in Washington and the media.
While the disappearance was only temporary, many Twitter users teased that it left a lasting impression.
"We'll all remember where we were during the 10 minutes of peace while Donald Trump's Twitter account was down," comedian Mike Drucker said.
