The lights go out as President Donald Trump (center), accompanied by Reps. Kevin Brady (left) and Diane Black, speaks at the White House on Tuesday. Though the lights went out manually (chief of staff John Kelly inadvertently hit the switch), there also was an email outage at the White House the same day. | Andrew Harnik/AP Photo Routine West Wing email outage prompts internal jokes about Russians

The lights weren’t the only thing that went out at the White House on Tuesday.

Shortly before the lights in the Roosevelt Room unexpectedly dimmed during President Donald Trump’s televised statement about Russian interference in the 2016 election, the White House Management Office sent staffers an email acknowledging “intermittent internet connectivity outages.”


The White House tech team is “aware of the issue and is troubleshooting the problem. We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience,” read the email, which was obtained by POLITICO.

One White House official said the outage prompted jokes about Russian hacking among West Wing staffers dealing with the fallout of Trump’s news conference with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Finland, where the U.S. president appeared to reject U.S. intelligence conclusions that the Kremlin attempted to influence the vote on Trump’s behalf.

During Roosevelt Room remarks Tuesday, Trump said he misspoke in Helsinki when he said he “didn’t see any reason why it would be Russia” that attempted to influence the election. “In a key sentence in my remarks, I said the word ‘would’ instead of ‘wouldn’t,’” Trump said, reading from a prepared statement.

But by Wednesday morning, Trump was again attacking critics of his meeting with Putin. “Some people HATE the fact that I got along well with President Putin of Russia,” he tweeted. “They would rather go to war than see this. It’s called Trump Derangement Syndrome!”

System issues aren’t uncommon in the White House or other executive agencies, including the State Department, and by late Tuesday afternoon, the White House internet appeared to be working normally, according to the White House official.

A White House spokesman did not respond to a request for comment on what caused the email outage.

Trump, for his part, made his own joke when he found himself briefly sitting in the dark in the Cabinet Room during his Tuesday remarks. “Whoops, they just turned off the lights. That must be the intelligence agencies,” Trump said. The lights dimmed immediately after the president said he had “full faith” in the U.S. intelligence community.

A Washington Post photographer who was in the room reported that White House chief of staff John Kelly had accidentally hit the light switch.

