The Week on Politwoops: who didn’t celebrate #FLBootDay, why politicians shared a fad diet and more

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A photo deleted from the official account of Gov. Rick Scott, R-Fla., of a black boot with an elaborate alligator image with flags behind it and '45th Governor' written at the top.
Photo via Politwoops.

We start off this week’s roundup of notable deleted tweets archived by our Politwoops project with the custom made boots of Gov. Rick Scott, R-Fla.. His official account shared (and later deleted) the photo to the right of his prized footwear with the message, “Celebrating #FLBootDay at the FL Capitol today.” The tweet was deleted earlier today after being public on his account for almost exactly one year and the photo appears to be of the same boots he showed off at an editorial meeting with the Sun Sentinel in 2012:

Scott also showed off his latest boots, emblazoned with alligators and five flags – depicting each nation that’s had control over Florida at some point in history: France, Spain, England, the Confederacy, and the United States.

Instead of joining in the #FLBootDay celebration, it appears the only action Gov. Scott took to mark the occasion was to scuff out last year’s kicks.

Throughout the week, the Twitter accounts of politicians across the geographic and partisan spectrum were afflicted with spam malware that tweeted out messages such as “I hate fad diets, but this fruit is legit!,” “I lost six pounds since I started taking garcinia.” and “A fruit that makes you lose weight? Sign me up!ARS Technica reports that the flood of malicious malware is tied to third party sites or apps and about a dozen accounts of politicians that we track in Politwoops were compromised including Rep. Tim Griffin, R-Ark., Rep. Rick Nolan, D-Minn., , and Rep. Scott Peters, D-Calif. While most politicians quietly deleted the spam and moved on, a number warned their followers and speculated on the causes such as Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., responded “believe someone / thing hijacked my account yesterday.” Dan Frei, a Republican House candidate in Nebraska, tweeted “Time for dirty tricks in politics, it seems. We have deleted the previous message, which was done by a hack.” and Elizabeth Emken, a Republican House candidate in California, responded to a follower, “the hacks are for sales on handbags & shoes & weight loss. #WarOnWomen.”

In other assorted deletions, the campaign account for Gov. Pat Quinn, D-Ill., removed two references (now only found on Politwoops) to a controversial article in the Chicago Sun Times that compared black Republicans to Jewish people collaborating with the Nazis during World War II. In a response to CNN, his campaign said they “didn’t thoroughly read the story before blasting it out to its Twitter followers.” Outlets citing Politwoops for this story included The Washington Free Beacon, Fox News, Newsmax and CNN’s Political Ticker.

The official account of Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, deleted a message saying, “This is a test tweet” which could be a check to see if their account is tracked by Politwoops, which we’ve seen many times before. If you like the project and want to improve our coverage, please send us an email if you notice anyone we’re missing!