After Outcry, Trump Administration Restores Judicial Branch Link to White House Site
Our article about the missing Judicial Branch link on the White House website triggered a rather large outcry on social media, with nearly 15,000 shares so far to Twitter and Facebook. My original tweet about it was retweeted thousands of times.
On the left, the White House website’s footer earlier this year. On the right, what it looks like today. Notice anything missing? pic.twitter.com/d7o8ceAcch
— Charles Johnson (@Green_Footballs) January 30, 2017
The idea that the Trump administration was trying to unilaterally erase the judicial branch seemed to strike a chord with a lot of people, for some odd reason — perhaps because Trump is acting like he’s beyond accountability in so many ways.
And someone in the Trump administration clearly noticed the outcry, because this morning that link has been restored. It’s been missing since January 20th, shortly after Trump’s inauguration concluded.
I’m seeing a lot of comments from people who are just learning about the story for the first time, calling my article “fake news” because the link is present on the White House site now. But it wasn’t fake news, or a rumor; that link was absolutely missing for more than a week. You can confirm this for yourself by checking the Internet Archive, which maintains HTML snapshots of web pages as they change.
Since screenshots can be faked, here’s proof for those who need it. (All times are GMT.)
Here’s the archived version at 5:00 pm on January 20th; the link is present in the “Our Government” section.
Here’s the archived version at 5:01 pm on January 20th; the link is gone. So it was removed between 5:00 pm and 5:01 pm, on Inauguration Day.
Here’s the archived version of the page as it existed last night shortly before midnight. The Judicial Branch link is not there.
Here’s the archived version at 3:56 pm today. Still not there.
And finally, here’s the archived version at 4:05 pm today — the link has been restored. So it was restored between 3:56 pm and 4:05 pm.
Why was this link (and the page it was linked to) removed on January 20th? The only way we’ll ever know is if the Trump gang makes a statement about it — and even then we won’t know for sure, because all of those people are shameless liars.