Anatomy of a Steve King Tweet

By Matt Fuller Posted at 3:58 p.m. on June 3

Rep. Steve King took to the Twittersphere Tuesday to denounce the prisoner exchange of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl forfive Taliban officials detained at Guantnamo Bay, asserting that the Obama administration and Bergdahl were working for al-Qaida.

To understand and appreciate the Iowa Republicans tweet, you have to break down all the subtle complexities, all the puzzle pieces that King rammed together.

He begins with a hashtag. And not a common one.

#Susan

A cursory Twitter search of #Susan shows that Twitter is averaging about two tweets an hour employing this hashtag, mostly as a shoutout to friends who presumably know #Susan.

The hashtag #SusanRice is doing much better about 10 tweets an hour but best of all is the trending topic of Susan Rice. Roughly 200 people an hour are tweeting her name. In short, King probably could have refrained from hitting the pound sign and saved himself a precious character in a tweet that used all 140 of them. (He could have used that extra character to write out the word to instead of using the numeral, because, as a general rule, its better to spell out the word when youre levying charges of treason.)

Rice lied 2 American people

Given the parenthetical later in the tweet (#Bergdahl taken in battle) this must refer to White House National Security Adviser Susan Rices contention that Bergdahl was taken in battle, as she said on Sunday during an appearance on ABCs This Week. That account contradicts a number of news reports, including from theNew York Times, that Bergdahl abandoned his post.

Continued here:
Anatomy of a Steve King Tweet