Washington: The US Defence Department's official Twitter account retweeted a message on Thursday calling for three American politicians, including President Donald Trump, to step away from politics amid sexual assault allegations.

The tweet, by a person using the handle "Proud Resister", stated the Republican President and Democrat Senator Al Franken should resign from their jobs and that Republican Roy Moore should step aside from running for the Alabama Senate. It also blamed the Republican Party for "making sexual assault a partisan issue," adding: "It's a crime as is your hypocrisy."

An official US government Twitter account appeared, briefly, to endorse a call for President Donald Trump to resign. Credit:Bloomberg

The tweet was quickly deleted with the department saying it was a mistake. At time of publishing, the original Proud Resister tweet had been liked 4.7 million times and retweeted more than 2.1 million times.