The Week on Politwoops: a lone cone, puppies and a pub

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A photo of Rep. Tom Reed, R-N.Y., smiling while holding an ice cream cone in a parking lot that was deleted from his official account.
Deleted photo via Politwoops.

In this week’s roundup of deleted tweets from politicians archived by Politwoops, we examine a number of recent examples of messaging changes that came in the form of image deletions and replacements.

We start with the picture to the right of a grinning Rep. Tom Reed, R-N.Y., enjoying an ice cream while standing alone in a parking lot. It was deleted from his official Twitter account after a minute and replaced by another image of Reed (not grinning) inside the store with a woman in the background. Whoever is responsible for managing his account did not respond to a request for comment and Politwoops remains the only resource to research the subtle manicuring of U.S. politicians on Twitter.

Another seemingly innocuous image deleted forever from a politician’s public Twitter feed this week was the photograph of gubernatorial candidate and Lt. Gov. Anthony G. Brown, D-Md., holding two puppies seen below with the message, “In honor of #NationalDogDay!

Gubernatorial candidate and Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown, D-Md., holds two puppies in a photo deleted from his campaign Twitter account and caught by Politwoops.
Delete photo via Politwoops.

After 30 minutes, whoever runs his campaign Twitter account calculated that this image was too much for the public to handle and deleted it. Like the social media experts over at the Reed campaign, the Brown campaign ignored multiple requests for comment.

Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., joined in the National Dog Day celebrations with a tweet that initially said, “It’s #NationalDogDay, but at the Foxx house, every day is #SultanDay. I’m on the road now, but will post a pic tomorrow.” Perhaps due to confusion over the infrequently used #SultanDay or a lack of common knowledge about the identity of “Sultan,” that tweet was deleted from her official account after eight minutes and replaced with a tweet saying, “It’s #NationalDogDay, but our boxer Sultan thinks every day at the Foxx house is #SultanDay. I’m on the road, but will post a pic tomorrow.” Fortunately, Foxx or someone running her account came through with that photo the next day, as promised.

A photo of Rep. Bill Enyart, D-Ill., deleted from his official Twitter feed and caught by Politwoops.
Photo via Politwoops.

The campaign account for Rep. Bill Enyart, D-Ill., deleted a tweet over the weekend that said, “A big thanks to Abbey for her hospitality at the St. Nicholas Brew Pub in #DuQuoin!” with the image seen to the right. The appreciative note and attached photo of the smiling monogrammed politician in a pub were scrubbed from his feed after 33 minutes for unknown reasons as his office refused to respond to my inquiry.

Politwoops made the news a few times this week including Politico, who citing the project for catching politicians deleting their ALS challenge tweets. KCEN-TV in Texas did a segment on the same topic and U.S. News and World Report did a piece linking to a number of tweets archived by Politwoops.

I hope everyone spends the holiday weekend scouring Politwoops for politicians we’re missing and that when we return next Tuesday our inbox will be full of suggestions. Have a good one!