I’ve been doing social media trainings for brands, C-suite types and celebrities since I opened the doors of Everywhere Agency back in 2009. The rules of Twitter always confuse the novices. I go through an elaborate spiel in explaining what “tagging” on Twitter is. It goes like this: “Okay so there’s this thing on Twitter called tagging but you have to use the actual handle.” The idea of a handle always confounds, so I go on, “Yeah, so like everyone on Twitter has a handle. Kind of like truckers back in the day. You know, like Smoky and the Bandit?” This usually helps but the problem is that people who don’t speak fluent Twitter often confuse a hashtag and a handle. I try to explain, “Noooo, don’t hashtag a person if they have a handle.” All of that has changed thanks to Senior Advisor to POTUS, Anthony Scaramucci.

@Scaramucci, as he is known to his nearly 840,000 Twitter followers, provided the perfect tagging example in a Tweet he sent out on Thursday night. He tagged Reince Priebus, none other than Donald Trump’s Chief of Staff. This is a classic example of tagging and one I had planned to use in future social media trainings, except for one problem. @Scaramucci later deleted the Tweet. Darn it!

It’s truly a shame that he took down his Tweet because it provides a perfect opportunity to demystify tagging. I mean look at the cleverness – he tags the FBI correctly. Lots of people might say #FBI, but Anthony seems to know that with nearly 850,000 followers, if he mentions the FBI, chances they are going to sit up and take notice. Same is true with the @JusticeDept tag. Trust me, they heard about it, even though he deleted the tweet!

There was, however, a cryptic nature to his Tweet tagging, which may be the underlying reason why he deleted said Tweet. You’ll notice at the end, he mentions @Reince45. Who’s @Reince45 you ask? That should be easy, Donald Trump affectionately calls him Reince-y. @Reince45 is none other than Reince Priebus, until two days ago the aforementioned Chief of Staff to 45. Now when you tag someone in this fashion, it’s definitely more than mere comradeship. In fact, it appears as if he’s putting old Reinc-y on notice – like somehow he’s involved. Hard to tell, but I’d have to assume he meant this more as a threat than sign of allegiance. Things indeed unfolded quickly over the next 48 hours, with Reince getting the “You’re Fired” treatment and Scaramucci strutting like a peacock, trash-talking to the New Yorker while still trying to clarify his deleted Tweet.

Speaking of nicknames, @Scaramucci is lovingly known as the “Mooch.” I wonder with his new power, if he’ll be tempted to take a page from the Reinc-y Twitter handbook and rename his handle @Mooch45?