The Week on Politwoops: jalapeño eating contest, dinner with Scalia and more

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A photo of Rep. Derek Kilmer pointing at a medal and smiling that was deleted from the Twitter feed of Rep. Henry Cuellar that declared Rep. Kilmer the winner of the Laredo Day jalapeño eating contest.
Image via Politwoops.

Happy Friday and welcome to another collection of notable deleted tweets from U.S. politicians archived by our Politwoops project.

We start out with the account for Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, which removed a tweet with the image to the right that read, “And the winner of the #Laredo Day jalapeño eating contest is… @RepDerekKilmer!!!” An image and message from the start and finish of the contest remain on Rep. Cuellar’s official House Twitter feed.

The campaign account for Rep. Luke Messer, R-Ind., cleared about 20 tweets that all mentioned C-SPAN or that encouraged followers to check out his official account. These types of deletions are becoming a trend caught by Politwoops and the oldest deletion was more than a year old.

An image from a deleted tweet by Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., of him and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.
Image via Politwoops.

Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., deleted the image to the left with the message, “Had a fascinating dinner and conversation with Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, @SCOTUS_Scalia.” The tweet was sitting on his official account for about a week before he deleted it, perhaps because the parody @SCOTUS_Scalia Twitter account he mentioned responded with “Enjoyed your Jew jokes.” The message and image from Rep. Scalise was never corrected and is now only available in the Politwoops archive.

The campaign account for Rob Maness, a Louisiana Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, deleted a tweet with the 15 minute video of vibrantly dressed and inebriated Fat Tuesday revelers embedded below with the message, “We wish everyone a happy & safe #MardiGras today. Here’s a video of the Courir de Mardi Gras in Eunice.” There’s no other mention of Mardi Gras or Fat Tuesday on the candidate’s Twitter feed.

Following Tuesday’s primary in Texas, we’ve gone through all the results to remove the losers and add the winning candidates. As always, please shoot us an email if there are folks we’re missing.