The Week on Politwoops: Backtracking on Bergdahl, weight loss spam and more

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A collection of deletions caught by Politwoops about Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl.

Deletions via Politwoops.

As the election season heats up, politicians are closely managing their messaging but in trying to cover their tracks their deleted tweets join the growing Politwoops archive. This week six politicians deleted tweets welcoming the return of Taliban POW Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl and got the attention of many news organizations. Outlets using Politwoops in their stories included the AP, Washington Post, USA Today, The Hill, Mashable (twice!), Bloomberg, PBS Newshour, MSNBC, Politico, Buzzfeed, International Business Times and many more!

The deleted tweets, shown to the right, are now safely archived on Politwoops and the accounts included Sen. Thad Cochran, R-MS, who is in the midst of a close runoff election and GOP Senate candidate Joni Ernst, who recently emerged victorious in her primary this week. View all the tweets by clicking the image for a larger size or see them on Politwoops.

In other Politwoops news, the campaign account for Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., got hacked by some sort of Pinterest spam pushing weight loss. The messages now archived by Politwoops included “As of right now I have lost 7 pounds with this amazing fruit!” and “I didn’t think I would ever be in shape for the summer!” Politicians get hit by these frustrating aspects of social media just like the rest of us and Rep. Rohrabacher took it in stride by tweeting, “yep, hacked. What a stupid game. Everybody knows I don’t need to lose weight. Ha Ha! Anyway, twernt me.” Finally the campaign account for Michael McKenna, a Democrat running for Congress in Florida who frequently distances the campaign from the party, deleted a tweet saying, “@dccc thanks for the GREAT conversation today. Look forward to seeing you all soon! #mckennaforcongress #UniteBlue #PeopleOverPolitics.”

That does it for this week’s roundup and please let us know if we’re missing any politicians from our system. Have a good weekend!