IT MIGHT BE ILLEGAL FOR TRUMP TO TWEET AND DELETE NOW THAT HE’S PRESIDENT
All because of the Presidential Records Act.
When an average human tweets something they regret, it’s not a big deal if they delete it. When the tweeter in question is the President of the United States though, it’s a little more complicated.
On Saturday, Donald Trump tweeted about his excitement to take office. It was a nice tweet, but with a potentially-embarrassing typo. The POTUS misspelled “honored.”
Trump realized the mistake and, like many people would, he deleted the tweet and re-tweeted with the typo fixed, according to The Hill (the corrected tweet has also since been deleted). Now that he’s the president though, tweeting and deleting could be a legal issue.
As Mic reports, the Presidential Records Act of 1978 requires the president to obtain “views of the Archivist of the United States” before disposing of records. In the digital age, presidential tweets are a public record. But, since the tweets in question were sent from Trump’s personal account and not the @POTUS account, it’s unclear if they’re covered by the PRA.
We’ll have to wait and see how tweets, particularly those sent from Trump’s personal account, are treated going forward.
By Marie Claire
be careful POTUS!
The deleted tweet
