Romney Adviser Richard Grenell Deletes More Than 800 Tweets - Update: Wrote for Breitbart’s Big Journalism
Richard Grenell, Mitt Romney’s new campaign spokesman, appears to have deleted more than 800 tweets he posted attacking women and the media.
On Friday afternoon, Grenell still featured a link to his personal site (richardgrenell.com) on his Twitter profile, which then showed that he had tweeted 7,577 times, according to a screenshot taken Friday by The Huffington Post. By Sunday morning, Grenell’s Twitter feed only listed 6,759 tweets and his personal site is no longer available. (Some examples of past writing have been archived on the Internet and can be found here.)
In the Twitter-fueled 2012 election, it’s not surprising that reporters quickly began digging through Grenell’s Twitter feed, even before he got a chance to scrub out a number of impolitic and sexist comments.
ThinkProgress noted Grenell’s tendency to make cutting remarks about the appearances of prominent women in media and politics, including his tweet advising MSNBC host Rachel Maddow “to take a breath and put on a necklace,” and another suggesting she resembled a Justin Bieber.
In another tweet, Grenell wrote that “Hillary is starting to look liek Madeline [sic] Albright.” He discussed First Lady Michelle Obama working out and “sweating on the East Room carpet.” He also asked whether Callista Gingrich’s “hair snaps on,” and on another occasion, commented how Gingrich’s third wife “stands there like she is wife #1.” Politico flagged more examples and noted Grenell’s “old pastime” of “ridiculing the Gingriches.”
When contacted about Romney’s hiring of Grenell and his removal of online writing, a campaign spokesperson referred The Huffington Post to a response Grenell gave to Politico. “My tweets were written to be tongue-in-cheek and humorous but I can now see how they can also be hurtful,” Grenell said. “I didn’t mean them that way and will remove them from twitter. I apologize for any hurt they caused.”
Grenell has solid wingnut credentials, by the way; he’s even written articles for breitbart.com. Here’s a cache of his now-deleted website, showing a link to his Big Journalism articles: Journalists as Advocates - Richard Grenell. (h/t: Gus.)
And notice that the link is broken — as is every other link ever posted to Big Government, Big Journalism, or Big Peace before the mini-Breitbarts redesigned the site and completely trashed all existing links on the entire Internet.