A few weeks ago it came to light that when a Navy SEAL-led military mission in a small Yemeni village became an investigable nightmare, President Donald Trump wasn’t even in the Situation Room. The mission resulted in the death of U.S. Navy SEAL William “Ryan” Owens — and three other wounded soldiers. That was on Saturday, January 28, 2017.
The same time that Owens was sacrificing his life for our country, the man who okayed the orders was elsewhere — using his phone on Twitter.
“I will be interviewed by @TheBrodyFile on @CBNNews tonight at 11pm. Enjoy!” read a tweet from President Donald Trump’s personal account on Saturday, Jan. 28.
Whether it was Trump himself or an aide who sent out that tweet at 5:50 p.m. ― about half an hour into a firefight that cost a Navy SEAL his life ― cannot be determined from the actual tweets, and the White House isn’t saying. Likewise, it’s not clear who deleted the tweet some 20 minutes later, or why the new president, just a week on the job, chose not to directly monitor the first high-risk military operation on his watch.
Well, the tweet was erased. But, who is to say that the tweet was erased because of the potential debacle the Yemeni operation was becoming?
The CBN interview did not actually air until the following night, Jan. 29, and Trump or an aide may have realized the error and deleted the tweet for that reason. Alternatively, Trump or an aide might have realized that the Yemen operation was going badly and deleted the tweet to avoid looking callous. The tweet appears to have been sent via an iPhone, not via Android. Tweets sent from an iPhone are generally from the president’s staff, often taking his dictation, while tweets sent by Android are usually composed by Trump himself.