It's difficult to tell when someone's X/Twitter account has been hacked when their regular account posts are consistently bizarre and erratic, but it seems in the recent case of Donald Trump Jr. he has indeed actually been hacked, according to his spokesperson.

“Don’s account has been hacked,” his spokesman Andrew Surabian explained on his X account on Wednesday. He also noted that a post claiming the former president Donald Trump had died was “obviously not true.”

Among the false and even-strange-for-a-Trump-account standards crossed with recent posts were not just the false pronouncement of Donald Trump's death, but also a claim that Donald Trump Jr. himself would be running for president. That post garnered more than 1,000 reshares on X and hundreds of thousands of views. Yet another post seemed to threaten the country of North Korea. Meanwhile, a pinned post on the account’s profile insulted President Joe Biden with the use of a racist epithet.

According to CNN, the posts were removed roughly a half-hour after they first surfaced. Once hacking was attributed as the cause, it raised a new series of questions — mostly for the platform they arose on and its boss Elon Musk.

Account security has been a major concern at X/Twitter ever since Musk eliminated more than 80% of employees when he purchased the company. There is considerable worry that high-profile accounts, such as those of key political figures, could be compromised during the 2024 election cycle buildup.

Last year, as reported by CNN and The Washington Post, the company's former head of security, Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, filed a whistleblower disclosure alleging widespread and unaddressed security vulnerabilities. X is currently under investigation by the Federal Trade Commission regarding these claims, as well as whether it violated binding agreements it made in 2011 to secure the platform.

Questions also now surround whether the hack resulted in unauthorized access to Trump Jr.’s private direct messages, and/or whether Trump Jr. had two-factor authentication enabled on his account. Donald Trump Jr. making his password 1-2-3-4 certainly feels on brand and in character for him and it stands to reason that this is also a possible cause of the hacking. Might be time to throw a non-sequential number in the mix, Donny, and then the next time this happens you can move on to letters.

It's too bad Succession is no longer on the air because this really could be the inspiration for a great new episode. Though in the Succession version, Connor Roy probably actually wrote the bizarre posts himself when he was on a bender, and his sister Shiv Roy just had to spin it as “being hacked” to save face for the powerful conservative political family. Come to think of it, are we 100% sure that's not what happened here?