McDonald's has said its Twitter account was "compromised" during the sending of an insulting message to president Donald Trump describing him as a "disgusting excuse of a president".
The now-deleted tweet from the verified @McDonaldsCorp account said: “@RealDonaldTrump You are actually a disgusting excuse of a President and we would love to have @BarackObama back, also you have tiny hands.”
The tweet was sent at 9.16am eastern standard time (1.16pm Irish time) and remained live for around 15 minutes before it was deleted.
Twitter notified us that our account was compromised. We deleted the tweet, secured our account and are now investigating this.
— McDonald's (@McDonaldsCorp) March 16, 2017
During this time, whoever was in control of the account pinned it to the top of @McDonaldsCorp’s Twitter page.
In a tweet on its corporate Twitter account McDonald’s said: “Twitter notified us that our account was compromised. We deleted the tweet, secured our account and are now investigating this.”
Twitter users rushed to air their theories about what happened: suggesting perhaps the account had been hacked, an employee had mistakenly tweeted from the wrong account on Tweetdeck, or a disgruntled employee wanted to make their mark.
The tweet was greeted with delight from some users of the site.
Some Trump supporters began to tweet about instigating a boycott.
President Trump is known to be a McDonald's fan. When he won the Republican party's presidential nomination, he celebrated with a McDonald's meal on his plane, as seen in his Instagram.
He has previously said he is partial to a “fish delight”, although by this he probably meant the McDonald’s Filet-O-Fish.
Agencies