The State Dept. and a notice about President Donald Trump

AgnosticPreachersKid/Wikimedia State Dept. Mikael Thalen

State Department website changed to say Trump’s term has ended

It remains unclear whether the change was intentional or not.

 

Mikael Thalen

Tech

Posted on Jan 11, 2021   Updated on Jan 11, 2021, 3:10 pm CST

The website for the U.S. Department of State caused a stir online Monday after a biography page for President Donald Trump was altered to say that his term had ended.

The page, which quickly spread across Twitter, included a solitary statement: “Donald J. Trump’s term ended on 2021-01-11 19:39:22.”

Initially, some believed that the issue may have been a glitch. Twitter user Olivier Knox claimed that the page had apparently been altered at the beginning of the month as well.

But other users quickly chimed in to note that the biography for Pence had changed, too.

Christopher Miller, a correspondent with BuzzFeed News, announced not long after that, according to sources, the alteration had been made on purpose by a “disgruntled staffer.”

The Daily Dot has since reached out to inquire about the pages but did not receive a reply by press time.

The president’s biography page became unavailable roughly one hour after the change was noticed.

While details remain scarce, the page quickly became the subject of memes online as Twitter users began offering up alterations of their own.

https://twitter.com/edzitron/status/1348726716164759552
https://twitter.com/malloriesullivn/status/1348726801401606149?s=20

The change on the State Department website comes just days after the president’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol, which led to the death of five people. It has sparked numerous calls for the president to resign.


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*First Published: Jan 11, 2021, 3:06 pm CST