When politicians, journalists, and celebrities write ill-considered tweets, they often reach for the “delete” button as quickly as they can, hoping to erase the evidence of their foolishness before anyone notices. Unfortunately for them — but fortunately for you! — that trick hardly ever works. Thus, we present the twenty best deleted tweet events of 2013!
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20. In the wake of George Zimmerman’s acquittal, actress Kirstie Alley said that white people like to murder black people. Or something.
“We”? Was Kirstie admitting to some sort of crime? Of course not, but those are the kinds of mistakes one can make when in a hurry to jump aboard a bandwagon.
19. Mötley Crüe bassist Nikki Sixx recently called “Duck Dynasty” patriarch Phil Robertson a racist, homophobic “a-hole.” We pointed out the time the Mötley Crüe bassist used the N-word. Oh, and the time he hurled an anti-gay slur. We’re generous like that. After we published our post, sneaky Sixx quietly deleted his tweets.
http://twitter.com/#!/NikkiSixx/status/413914119469674496
http://twitter.com/#!/NikkiSixx/status/413924928258191360
http://twitter.com/#!/NikkiSixx/status/413925720398651392
And the award goes to …
http://twitter.com/#!/NikkiSixx/status/413930001549905920
Now Sixx is singing a new tune.
18. CBS News’ White House correspondent Major Garrett is not f-ing kidding about your shirty business. In a rare hat trick of deleted tweet, funny typo, and accidental tweeting of DM, Garrett showed Twitter he’s not to be messed with!
http://twitter.com/#!/MajorCBS/status/301006957173673984
17. Whenever there’s an attack on American soil, if there’s any question about the intentions of the attacker, you can be assured that lefties will scramble all over themselves to blame conservatives, and if you’re lucky, the Tea Party. But usually it’s not a U.S. Forest Service PR rep!
http://twitter.com/#!/ForestInsider/status/323927693114609665
You would think that the “Director of Public Affairs for the Southern Region of the U.S. Forest Service” might be more careful about her relations with the public. But you would be wrong.
16. Graeme Zielinski, communications director for the Wisconsin Democratic Party, has a history of making sensational claims about Gov. Scott Walker. (Correction: He is the former communications director for the Wisconsin Democratic Party.) Last year, he suggested that Walker defended criminals who commit “boy rape.” This year, he took it a step further, making a comparison between the Republican Governor and serial killer/cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer:
http://twitter.com/#!/gjzielinski/status/307533106817146882
http://twitter.com/#!/gjzielinski/status/307527092168433664
It was a tough call, but the honor goes to this one:
http://twitter.com/#!/gjzielinski/status/307529620037713920
15. Like a lot of liberals, the Democratic mayor of New Jersey’s fourth-largest city believes that the problems with HealthCare.gov were caused by Republican shenanigans:
http://twitter.com/#!/MayorBollwage/status/391691820113358849
By the way, what the heck is “robot calling”?
14. Fox News anchor Shepard Smith’s people “confirmed” that shots were fired outside the White House when the real story was that some idiot was throwing firecrackers.
@AceofSpadesHQ You mean this, deleted, tweet? pic.twitter.com/RPh5eVWNe2
— Arthur Kimes (@ComradeArthur) September 16, 2013
13. “Real journalists” really wanted the story of the Sandy Hook father who was “heckled” by gun rights supporters to be true, even though it definitely was not. Even some lefty outlets like Slate admitted they blew the story. CNN’s Anderson Cooper must have gotten the memo just before he deleted this tweet:
12. Van Jones wants you to know that Fox News is “PATHETIC.” Unfortunately for him, the Photoshop that “proved” his point was a fake.
11. A former Afghanistan Ambassador falsely accused U.S. soldiers of killing the last lion in Kunar province. Problem is, there are no lions in the wild in Afghanistan, and the photo is fake.
http://twitter.com/#!/AmbassadorJawad/status/415815989725765632
10. Agence France-Presse’s Emal Haidary definitely wasn’t the only one who tweeted out a bogus story about Sarah Palin arriving in South Korea for Nelson Mandela’s funeral, but he may have been the only professional journalist to do so.
http://twitter.com/#!/menh0/status/410726112868573185
9. CNN’s Christiane Amanpour wished human rights abuser Robert Mugabe a happy birthday:
http://twitter.com/#!/camanpour/status/304707026586570752
How sweet! After deleting her celebratory tweet, and replacing with a more benign recognition of the milestone, she tried to act as if she had been ironically tweeting. Then why delete it, Alanis Morissette?
8. When “Fast and Furious” movie star Paul Walker died last month, Jezebel editor Erin Ryan took the occasion to show everyone just how classy she can be:
http://twitter.com/#!/morninggloria/status/406984650503245824
After doubling down on her hatred and blaming conservatives, she deleted the tweet. But not before we took notice.
7. Given the trash that flows freely out of Sarah Silverman’s gutter mind without apology, it took a lot for her to top herself and tweet something so awful that she was forced to delete it. Oh, here it is:
http://twitter.com/#!/SarahKSilverman/status/350027506272829440
Actually, Gov. Perry had found the word offensive and painted over the epithet. After deleting the three separate times she deceptively insulted Perry, Silverman tried to explain it away by saying the tweets were too negative. That hasn’t stopped her before.
After her pitiful walkback, she was spanked for losing her ongoing fight for laughs.
6. Pastor and televangelist Joel Osteen usually tweets benign inspirational Christian messages, which made this deleted tweet the “best unintentionally awesome tweet ever”:
oops joel osteen deleted the tweet my "hehe rub it out" tweet was referring to, here it is: http://t.co/tLxtN9WqXO
— donny (@d_o_n_n_y_) November 1, 2013
Either Osteen was radically changing his stance on lust, or he didn’t quite see all the possible hilarious interpretations of his well-meaning message. Since he deleted it, we imagine it was the latter.
5. What’s a list of worst tweeters without the man, the myth, the toupee, the one and only (thank God) Donald Trump? In one little tweet, the Donald embarrassed organizers who invited him to speak at CPAC when he ridiculously announced that Ashley Judd was “going to be a great candidate” for U.S. Senate:
http://twitter.com/#!/realDonaldTrump/status/311471076972580864
He deleted the tweet, and covered by trying to blame Karl Rove. Judd decided not to run, but unfortunately The Donald continues to tweet.
4. We’re not sure what we did to have Britain dump their useless political commentators on our shores, but it sure isn’t helping international relations to have Piers Morgan make bogus claims to satisfy his gun-grabbing gluttony:
http://twitter.com/#!/piersmorgan/status/379744807167340544
Musket is picking up a sweet 2013 Twitchy award for this one:
http://twitter.com/#!/piersmorgan/status/379749140734828545
Morgan was just salivating at the chance to to blame the AR-15 for the Washington Navy Yard shooting, but he had to delete his tweets after he learned that the accused shooter didn’t use an AR-15. Oddly, this tweet is still live:
The Wash Navy Yard shooter had 3 guns including AR-15 assault rifle – same killing machine used at Aurora and Sandy Hook.
— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) September 16, 2013
3. Remember when Rolling Stone magazine insulted everyone by featuring a rock ‘n roll cover of Boston Bomber Dzhokhar Tzarnaev? Its senior editor thought he’d defuse the situation by making an obscene joke to make light of the furor. Didn’t work:
This is a senior editor at Rolling Stone. pic.twitter.com/lJkHXHRUD4
— John Podhoretz (@jpodhoretz) July 18, 2013
He deleted the tweet and apologized for the joke, but not for the offensive cover that imagined Tzarnaev as a rock star.
2. Coming in at number two of the top deleted tweets of 2013 is the ridiculously obscene insult blithely tweeted by a foul-mouthed staffer at The Onion against the 9-year-old actress Quvenzhané Wallis:
http://twitter.com/#!/TheOnion/status/305900584278556672
Wow. You like to be edgy, Onion, but you pirouetted right over the edge on that one, and Twitter was not amused!
1. And now, the number one deleted tweet of 2013 honor goes to … Geraldo “Capone Vault” Rivera! Long before Barack Obama made the selfie devoid of all coolness, Geraldo sent a selfie via Tweet that “launched a thousand breakfasts”:
The face that launched a thousand breakfasts pic.twitter.com/aTTNOnynRd
— Anthony Bourdain (@Bourdain) July 21, 2013
With just one press of the send button, Geraldo made an entire internet turn in revulsion, and forever lose its innocence. Truly, we will never be the same thanks to the terrible tweeting of that stomach-turning selfie on that day that will live in tweetfamy.
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If your favorite deleted tweet didn’t score a Twitchy award, stay tuned. More awards are on the way.
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