Two network reporters got in hot water on Twitter for tweets they posted – and then deleted – on Thursday. ABC News political director Rick Klein drew outrage for suggesting the conservative movement needed to be ahem, “cleansed.”
“Trump will be an ex-president in 13 days. The fact is that getting rid of Trump is the easy part,” Klein wrote in a since-deleted post on Twitter. “Cleansing the movement he commands is going to be something else.”
“Cleansing” was the word that caused the tweet’s deletion, since it echoes the term “ethnic cleansing,” defined as the “mass expulsion or killing of members of an unwanted ethnic or religious group in a society.”
Political Director for @ABC News based in Washington DC appears to have deleted his tweet about the 75 million Americans who voted for Trump that talked about the challenge of "cleansing the movement." pic.twitter.com/HS1Rwrn94S
— Omri Ceren (@omriceren) January 7, 2021
Klein’s online article uses the term “cleaning up” now:
Even aside from impeachment and 25th Amendment talk, Trump will be an ex-president in 13 days. The fact is that getting rid of Trump is the easy part.
Cleaning up the movement he commands, or getting rid of what he represents to so many Americans, is going to be something else.
Then Ed O’Keefe, the CBS man on the Biden beat, couldn’t help a little Democratic fanboy-ing for Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. After the news broke that Education Secretary Betsy DeVos was resigning over the Capitol riots, Whitmer mocked her in a tweet, and O’Keefe retweeted it, adding two flame emojis for her hot take:
This has the sweet smell of Mark Leibovich somehow, the New York Times reporter who gushed to Obama strategist David Axelrod after he mocked Mitt Romney on Twitter in 2012: "You ate your Tweeties today, Axe. Impressed!"
PS: O'Keefe's CBS colleague Grace Segers went on a weird mask-shaming thread. This isn't deleted. "Congressman Markwayne Mullin was one of the lawmakers who bravely helped barricade the doors to the House chamber. But according to video obtained by @PunchbowlNews, he was not wearing a mask, and even appeared to decline one when another lawmaker was handing them out."
