The Week on Politwoops: Reagan telegram, deleted donations and staffers in the wrong account
This week’s roundup of deleted tweets by politicians archived on Politwoops includes an endorsement telegram, some donations and two staffers accidentally tweeting from their boss’ official account.
The official Twitter account for Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, deleted a tweet earlier today with the image to the right and the message, “Photo: A telegram of Ronald Reagan’s 1976 endorsement of Hatch, Reagan’s first and only only primary endorsement.” The tweet was taken down after being public for four hours. A corrected version never appeared and his account did not respond for a request for comment. We’ll update this post if we hear back.
The campaign account of Gov. Susana Martinez, R-N.M., also had some unexplained deletions this week with the first two tweets since she won re-election in November. Her account did not respond to multiple requests for comment about why these tweets about charitable donations were deleted:
Many Twitter accounts in the name of politicians are actually run by staffers and occasionally they will mix up which account they are tweeting from. This can lead to confusion and bizarre sounding deletions, such as when it seemed Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., tweeted a vulgar Benihana tweet or when it looked like Rep. Stephen Fincher, R-Tenn., said “God I love this song. And beach music. AND shagging.”
Today, staffers from both sides of the aisle made this type of mix-up. A staffer for Rep. Robert Aderholt, R-Ala., was responsible for this deletion commenting on a photo, “that laser beams could shoot out of FLOTUS’ eyes.” He responded simply, “yep, wrong acct.” And this deletion from the official account of Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., was a staffer who said he “dual tweeted by mistake.”
On Tuesday, CNN’s Chris Moody wrote a piece about how Twitter is increasing its Washington presence. Twitter’s even producing “a handbook for policymakers on how best to use the platform, which along with security guidelines, recommends that policymakers use their accounts themselves to share photos and information about their lives and work.” We agree and the article includes a section saying Politwoops “serves as a graveyard of congressional digital mishaps.”
Please let us know with a quick email if there are accounts Politwoops is missing, and have a good weekend!