In what appears to be the latest in a minor wave of attacks on Twitter accounts belonging to out-sized corporate entities, an out-of-character tweet from Donald Trump's verified account set the Internet abuzz, and then disappeared, shortly before noon ET on Thursday.
"These hoes think they classy, well that's the class I'm skippen," read the suspect remark issued from @realDonaldTrump. It was a glaring non sequitur following tweets such as "Republicans must be careful with immigration—don’t give our country away," and "Wow, Macy's numbers just in-Trump is doing better than ever — thanks for your great support!"
"Yes, obviously the account has been hacked and we are looking for the perpetrator," Rhona Graff, senior vice president, assistant to the president of the Trump Organization, told NBC News via email.
This confirmation was quickly echoed by Trump himself, in a tweet that read, "My Twitter has been seriously hacked — and we are looking for the perpetrators."
Cut off after a single rogue tweet, the Trump Twitter anomaly was far shorter than the Burger King and Jeep takeovers earlier this week. On Monday, Burger King's Twitter account was hacked and renamed McDonalds, and over the course of a hour, sent out 53 tweets (and garnered 73,421 retweets) making light of the situation. The Tuesday attack on Jeep's Twitter account — which included the erroneous announcement that the car maker had been taken over by Cadillac — ceased after just 10 minutes and 13 tweets.
Soon after @Jeep regained control, the Twitter accounts of MTV and BET appeared to be compromised. The MTV account tweeted claims the network had been taken over by BET, and BET tweeted it was now owned by MTV. This turned out to be a publicity stunt by the networks, both owned by Viacom. As NBC News reported on Tuesday, the account of a PR representative warned of the hack ahead of time on Twitter and then both MTV and BET copped to the scheme after the "hack."
NBC News has asked the Trump Organization how Trump was able to regain control of his Twitter account so quickly, and will update this story if we receive a response.
Helen A.S. Popkin goes blah blah blah about the Internet. Tell her to get a real job on Twitterand/or Facebook.