Pentagon retweets post calling on Trump to resign

The Pentagon’s official Twitter account has retweeted then quickly deleted a post that included a call for President Donald Trump to resign.

The original tweet was posted by a person whose Twitter handle is @ProudResister. It said, “The solution is simple. Roy Moore: Step down from the race. Al Franken: Resign from congress. Donald Trump: Resign from the presidency. GOP: Stop making sexual assault a partisan issue. It's a crime as is your hypocrisy.”

The official Defense Department account has more than 5.2m followers.

Pentagon spokesman Colonel Rob Manning said in a statement that an authorised operator of the Defense Department's official Twitter site “erroneously retweeted content that would not be endorsed by the Department of Defense. The operator caught this error and immediately deleted it.”

The same statement was tweeted by the Pentagon's chief spokesperson Dana White.

Many Twitter profiles contain a disclaimer saying that retweets do not constitute an endorsement, but the Pentagon account, @DeptofDefense, does not.

The @proudresister account also links to a website selling anti-Trump collectibles such as T-shirts.

Donald Trump, who has reshaped the way a president uses social media in the modern era, has made some accidental retweets himself.

In August, he retweeted a photoshopped cartoon of a "Trump train" smashing into a CNN reporter, captioned "Nothing can stop the #TrumpTrain."

The retweet was removed from Mr Trump's feed minutes later, and a White House official said it had been posted inadvertently.

On a smartphone or computer, a retweet requires two clicks or taps in order to post, meaning the President would have had a second chance to be sure he wanted to tweet the cartoon.