The Week on Politwoops: Tillis Montage, campaign clearings and more

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Happy Friday and welcome to another review of the week’s notable deleted tweets archived by our Politwoops project.

Earlier in the week, Thom Tillis, a Republican primary candidate for the U.S. Senate and current Speaker of the House in the North Carolina legislature, deleted a tweet now archived by Politwoops that links to a Youtube video (embedded below) entitled “Tillis Montage.” The sequence of short clips include all the campaign visual necessities replete with an uplifting generic soundtrack. Mr. Tillis walks while gesturing in a professional setting, strolls with his significant other and shares his leadership insights with smiling neighbors. While this glimpse behind the campaign messaging curtain was deleted from his Twitter feed, the video remains on Youtube and will no doubt resurface in campaign ads coming soon. Just a few hours ago, his campaign account deleted another tweet that read “Tillis Montage 2” and linked to an extended cut of the same b-roll clips with extra photographs added as a slideshow.

Three Democratic members of Congress deleted large chunks of old tweets from their campaign accounts, perhaps inspired by Rep. Randy Weber, R-Texas, who deleted 95 campaign tweets last week. The @ReElectCohen account for Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., removed 38 tweets ranging from 2 to 61 weeks after they were first shared. They were mostly retweets of his official @RepCohen account and mentions of media appearances, but one particular deletion that stirred up memories for this old Politwooper read, “.@RepCohen says #CyndiLauper #tweets were joke on media http://t.co/Oj6JOVBF3p #p2 #democrat #progressive #Politwoops #SunlightFoundation.”

The campaign Twitter account for Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., removed 29 tweets that comprised of links to press releases on his official House website and videos of speeches. Rep. Robin Kelly, D-Ill., joined her colleagues by wiping 9 tweets in a row from her @Robin42CD campaign Twitter account. The deletions were mostly Youtube links to speeches she gave on the House floor and the messages are now only available on the Politwoops archive. I’ve reached out to the campaign offices of all three representatives and will update this post with any responses.

Some recent additions to the Politwoops system include recommendations from an eagle-eyed follower who pointed out we missed a number of Republican challengers for the Senate race in South Dakota. Welcome to Politwoops, Larry Rhoden, Annette Bosworth and Stace Nelson. Please email me if you find any candidates or politicians that Politwoops is not currently tracking.

Finally, a hearty congratulations to our friends at the Open State Foundation who launched Diplotwoops today, a project to track the deleted tweets from diplomats around the world.