Ever since Twitter took off, many users have seen fit to include a disclaimer that their “retweets aren’t endorsements”—sometimes you’re just helping someone show their ass (figuratively and otherwise). For most, this social media sharing of occasionally questionable material doesn’t elicit much more than a “did you mean to RT this?” or “what is wrong with you?” But because the State Department’s Twitter accounts are under much greater scrutiny, it caught some heat over a retweet of a promotional post from Ivanka Trump. Apparently, someone with access to the agency’s Office Of Global Women’s Issues’ Twitter account passed along a post from the first daughter’s (no, not Tiffany—it’s never Tiffany) personal account, touting the release of her new book, Women Who Work.
Twitter users immediately began chastising the Gender At State account for retweeting the post, since it promotes the Trump family’s business interests. You know, kind of like how the State Department basically published an advertisement for Mar-a-Lago on its official website. The agency took that down, saying it had just wanted to let citizens know where Donald Trump vacations, since it’s hard to tell from his spray tan. And the Office Of Global Women’s Issues has also removed the retweet for Ivanka Trump’s book, though no apology or other acknowledgement of that little ethical blunder has followed. Now we’re just waiting on the NSA’s Instagram story about the security measures at one of Trump’s golf resorts.