Hawaii's governor was slow to correct the missile false alarm because he forgot his Twitter password

Hawaii Governor David Ige.
(Image credit: TORU HANAI/AFP/Getty Images)

When the government of Hawaii accidentally sent a statewide text message telling residents a ballistic missile was about to strike their home, the first official indication the warning was a false alarm came from Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) on Twitter. It would have come from Hawaii Gov. David Ige (D), he said Monday, but he couldn't remember how to get into his Twitter account.

"I have to confess that I don't know my Twitter account log-ons and the passwords, so certainly that's one of the changes I've made," Ige told The Washington Post for a report published Tuesday. Now, he added, he has been putting account information "on my phone so that we can access the social media directly."

While Gabbard got her Twitter post up within 12 minutes of the alert, Ige's password kerfuffle delayed him another five. The official corrective text message did not send until 38 minutes after the false alarm.

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.