Welcome to the second installment of Paste’s worst political tweets of the week. As full-time internet people, one of our super powers is being way too online, and so we have decided to use our gift for good, and curate the five worst tweets of Mueller Report week for you, dear reader.
Seth Abramson
These aren’t the worst tweets, but Abramson wins the award for worst tweeter of the week. I had to have my editor send me the embed code for this 2001 Barry Bonds-esque posting figure, because Seth Abramson, famed Russia conspiracy theorist, has me blocked. It is not because of this 2017 article I wrote, titled Stop Listening to Seth Abramson’s Hack Trump-Russia Theories, but from when I asked him a question for that piece on Twitter about where his donations go to, given that his bio stated he worked for The Huffington Post and Dallas Morning News, and I found myself blocked later that day. Anyway, if you’re not familiar with Seth Abramson, he’s a Twitter legend who writes absurdly long threads, and he did not disappoint on Mueller Report Day, posting an unfathomable 450 tweets about the report. He and I may have some differences (namely that he’s a charlatan whose central theories about the Mayflower Hotel and RNC platform change were completely, utterly, unequivocally repudiated by special counsel Robert Mueller), but I’m waiving the five-year grace period and immediately inducting this man into the Posting Hall of Fame. What a legend.
450/ On pg. 199, Mueller gives a big list of (it seems) Trumpworld personalities—all names/info redacted—who at some point lied to Mueller but then came clean, or cooperated, or for some other reason escaped punishment. You and I should be so lucky—if we ever acted like that.
— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) April 19, 2019
Jack Posobiec
Here is one tweet from a disgraced right-wing grifter (disgraced even on the right-wing) that is more detached from reality than that entire Seth Abramson thread to the power of that entire Seth Abramson thread, as he compared Trump to Jesus.
Just realized Barr is saying this man committed no crime and the media is chanting ‘crucify him crucify him’ and tomorrow is Good Friday
— Jack Posobiec (@JackPosobiec) April 18, 2019
Ben Shapiro
Speaking of right-wing grifters, the world’s preeminent brain pill salesman submitted a fantastic entry to the Bad Tweet of the Week consideration board.
Pretty amazing how quickly the media have swiveled away from Russian collusion — the purported cause of this entire shebang — to obstruction, which is largely based on the president acting angrily and erratically regarding collusion accusations.
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) April 18, 2019
I have one idea why: maybe because with the exception of Wikileaks, a cursory reading of the Mueller Report would make it obvious that Robert Mueller deflated the collusion angle, but said that the evidence around obstruction of justice was serious enough that Congress should investigate it? But what do I know, I’m not a member of the intellectual dark web, or who the New York Times called “the cool kid’s philosopher.”
Glenn Kessler
Taking a time-out from Mueller week, if you are reading the “fact-checker” in The Washington Post, please stop. Glenn Kessler is the worst “fact-checker” of the bunch in a public-facing business that largely does not hold itself to the very high standard of the word “fact.” He will always find some bizarre technicality to favor his “fact-checks” towards those in power (like literally taking Amazon and Wal-mart PR statements as statements of fact in his critique of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez), and this week’s installation did not disappoint. Mike Pence supported gay conversion therapy (also known as torture). He didn’t say “gay conversion therapy,” he just endorsed the practice in 2000, and yet…
ICYMI: We find little evidence that Pence supported “conversion therapy” —> https://t.co/ItNOQOqDek
— Glenn Kessler (@GlennKesslerWP) April 18, 2019
If I were as bad at my job here at Paste as Kessler is at WaPo, I would not have my job.
Chris Hayes
It brings me no pleasure to deliver this news to you, as I genuinely like The Only Good One at MSNBC and think that his book, Twilight of the Elites was incredibly prescient to our present Democratic moment. But holy cow, man. This is the worst tweet of the week. Overtly, it doesn’t look like anything other than a semi-misinformed Civil War take, but read this in the context of Robert Mueller Day.
Some of the critiques were even true. But they also knew what they were doing and which side they were on and their allegiances, no matter their protestations, are written into history.
— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) April 19, 2019
Here is Eoin Higgins, who has written for Paste in the past, explaining the ludicrous analogy that Hayes is trying to make here.
He’s analogizing the hashtag resistance folks that watch MSNBC to abolitionists and the left to moderate/right wing opponents of the anti-slavery movement. In reality, were today’s America having the slavery debate, Hayes and his network would be the exact people he’s criticizing
— Eoin Higgins (@EoinHiggins_) April 19, 2019
Here is the complete list of things that should be compared to slavery:
slavery.
Jacob Weindling is a staff writer for Paste politics. Follow him on Twitter at @Jakeweindling.