US Embassy In Egypt Takes Down Twitter Account After Controversial Jon Stewart Tweet

Michael Kelley | Apr. 3, 2013, 12:19 PM | 1,566

The U.S. Ambassador to Egypt briefly took down the @USEmbassyCairo account after taking heat from Egyptian President's office, a State Department official told Josh Rogin of Foreign Policy. The handle's last tweet was a link to Jon Stewart, of "The Daily Show," talking about the arrest of Egyptian satirist Bassem Youssef, who was detained and fined on charges of insulting Islam and President Mohamed Morsi.

Twitter/screenshot

The Egyptian presidency subsequently tweeted at at the Cairo Embassy, the Daily Show, and Youssef, saying: "It's inappropriate for a diplomatic mission to engage in such negative political propaganda."
"This not a permanent shutdown [by U.S. Ambassador to Egypt Anne Patterson]," the State Department official told Rogin. "Embassy Cairo considers this to be temporary. They want to put new procedures in place."
@USEmbassyCairo has a reputation for going rogue on Twitter. From The Washington Post in November:
“We want to see the constitutional process in #Egypt move forward in a way that does not overly concentrate power in one set of hands,” the account posted yesterday morning, earning a handful of incredulous responses from followers in Egypt and abroad. “The Egyptian people made clear in the January 25th revolution that they have had enough of dictatorship,” it followed up a few hours later, apparently taking sides with the protesters against Morsi.
The account is now back up, but with the most recent tweet deleted. Here's the clip from The Daily Show:



Published on Apr 2, 2013
The Egyptian government issues an arrest warrant for comedian Bassem Youssef.