President Trump is in hot water once again after the Twitter-sphere caught wind of a tweet the president deleted sometime in the night or early parts of the morning.
On Saturday, July 21, a tense hostage situation took place at a Trader Joe’s grocery store in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Hollywood. The three-hour long standoff ended with the suspect surrendering to police, but only after he’d already allegedly taken the life of a young woman.
Gene Evin Atkins was identified as the suspect accused of going on a shooting rampage in Los Angeles that ended with a store employee dead at a Trader Joe’s in the Silver Lake area. Melyda Corado was killed after Atkins allegedly took police on a high speed chase, crashed his vehicle, leaped out and ran into the grocery store, taking several people hostage in the process.
FacebookMelyda Corado
Los Angeles police were able to bring an end to the hostage standoff situation Saturday evening after a long afternoon of rescuing store employees and customers while Atkins remained inside and police tried to negotiate with him.
“We have successfully taken the suspect into custody without incident,” Los Angeles police said on Twitter.
#BREAKING: LAPD has a man in custody. Officers have made their way inside the #TraderJoes. It looks like the situation is over. #SilverLake @NBCLA
As the incident swept headlines across the nation, President Trump had tweeted that he was “watching [the] Los Angeles possible hostage situation very closely. Active barricaded suspect. L.A.P.D. working with Federal Law Enforcement.”
Since the president often tweets his thoughts, prayers and condolences during large scale incidents in America, it came as no surprise that he sent out a tweet during the hostage crisis in California.
What did come as a surprise was that the tweet had suddenly disappeared Sunday morning after the crisis ended and the suspect was arrested. Users flooded twitter with posts questioning why the president would have deleted such a simple, innocent tweet claiming that he was watching the incident unfold.
Interesting…. Donald Trump deleted this tweet today after saying LAPD was working with Federal Law Enforcement regarding a hostage situation in California.
Why did he delete it? And why is Federal Law enforcement involved in a small shooting?
“Interesting,” Twitter user Laura Loomer posted Sunday morning. “Donald Trump deleted this tweet today after saying LAPD was working with Federal Law Enforcement regarding a hostage situation in California. Why did he delete it? And why is Federal Law enforcement involved in a small shooting?”
Conspiracy theories quickly started to spread across social media as people questioned his motives for deleting the tweet. Some speculated that the president was “hoping the attack came from an undocumented worker.”
“Trump was hoping that the #Silverlake shooter was an immigrant or a Muslim. I guess he wasn’t, because Trump deleted his tweet about it,” Twitter user Fred. wrote.
When Trump found out the person in L.A. hostage situation wasn’t Muslim or illegal immigrant he deleted his tweet because he could no longer feed his base with fear.
Nell Scovell wrote: “Trump tweeted he was watching the #TraderJoes situation then deleted the tweet. Leading speculation is he was hoping the attack came from an undocumented worker. But maybe he deleted because the hero’s name was Melyda Corado. She sacrificed for others.”
Others accused Trump of deleting the tweet once he found out the shooter was a “domestic abuser.”
@MattxRed @ReadySetRock75 apparently Trump DELETED his tweet about monitoring the shooting when he found out the guy was a domestic abuser!
The president has deleted tweets in the past, usually involving typos or misinformation. However, the president doesn’t usually give a public reason why he deletes anything he posts, so Twitter might be guessing for a while. You can read a list of all the president’s archived tweets here.