Rule number one: Never tweet. Rule number two: If you must tweet, please delete.
It seems that Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress and now President Biden’s nominee for Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), got those memos too late. During her Senate confirmation hearing Tuesday, Tanden apologized for old, now-deleted tweets that jabbed at politicians such as “vampires have more heart than Ted Cruz.”
The hearing continued into Wednesday where senators kept bringing up Tanden’s tweets, which targeted both Republicans and Democrats. Senator John Neely Kennedy remarked that her tweets “disturbed” him before saying something quite disturbing himself: “You called Senator Sanders everything but an ignorant slut.”
Yup, that’s right: An SNL and The Office reference made it into Congress.
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After a tense back and forth over whether Tanden meant what she said in her tweets — where she relented and said she did mean them, but regretted them now — Kennedy wanted the record to show that he, himself, did not call Bernie Sanders an ignorant slut.
Kennedy: “I want the record to reflect that I did not call Senator Sanders an ignorant slut.”
Sanders: “I don’t know how I could take that, Senator Kennedy.” pic.twitter.com/OYPXQJ6FO3
— Jessy Han (@hjessy_) February 10, 2021
“I want the record to reflect that I did not call Senator Sanders an ignorant slut,” Kennedy said. Ever diplomatic, Sanders replied, “I don’t know how I should take that, Senator Kennedy.”
Frankly, I don’t know either. The fact that insulting tweets and SNL quotes are being uttered in Congress is just one indicator of how bizarre American politics have come.
You can watch the exchange starting at around one hour, 43 minutes in:
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