Politicians Who Ruined Their Careers On The Internet
The internet can be an incredible communication tool for everyone from politicians to entertainers to the kids in middle America who use it to become more famous than they could have ever imagined. Some people even think Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election on the strength of his Facebook strategy.
But for every internet success story, the opposite also exists. Influencers and entertainers seem especially adept at destroying their credibility through ill-advised posts. Remember when Chrissy Teigen's mean messages to minors derailed several of her business deals? How about the many YouTube stars who destroyed their careers in one fell swoop after painstakingly building their online empires from nothing?
Well, entertainers aren't the only ones whose internet activity can sometimes do more harm than good. Yes, some elections are won on the strength of a candidate's online presence. But every once in a while, a politician will fly a bit too close to the sun and completely trash their career through a bad tweet, a questionable DM, or just a viral video. Here are some of the politicians who probably wish their peer Al Gore had never "invented the internet."
New York Rep. Anthony Weiner
Former U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner was catapulted into the national political spotlight in July 2010 when he spoke on the House floor about the importance of benefits for emergency workers who'd shown up at the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001, according to CNN. Weiner was relatively unknown outside his home district in New York until that point. But less than a year later, in May 2011, his creepy public social media activity began.
"A lewd photo" of "a man's erect penis inside gray briefs" appeared on Weiner's Twitter account, according to the New York Post, but the congressman's spokesperson asserted that it wasn't him. Weiner himself claimed that he'd been hacked. But a few days later, Weiner backtracked and admitted he wasn't 100% sure it wasn't a photo of him.
And that was just the beginning of his bizarre and pervy Twitter antics. Women started revealing the married Weiner's sexts to the public, and he once even included his infant son in a photo, per the New York Post. But it was the lewd messages he sent to a 15-year-old girl that landed him in federal prison, according to the Daily Mail. Weiner ruined not only his career but his marriage through these missteps: He and his wife Huma Abedin were in the "final stages" of their divorce in November 2021, per The Cut. As BuzzFeed News puts it, Weiner "helped create social media politics, fully embraced it, and was quickly swallowed by it."
Pennsylvania politician Dean Browning
Since the beginning of Donald Trump's political career, accusations of racism dogged the former reality TV host. It might be due to his obsession with creating a border wall. There was also the whole "birtherism" thing. And for many people of color, his apparent racism was a dealbreaker: The numbers show that he lost the 2020 presidential election thanks to Black voters in a few key areas, according to USA Today.
But one high-profile Trump supporter — former Lehigh County Commissioner Dean Browning — was desperate to prove his candidate wasn't racist. So desperate, in fact, that he appeared to impersonate a "Black gay guy" on Twitter. Just a few days after the 2020 presidential election, the Pennsylvania-based Republican sent a confusing tweet from his verified account: "I'm a Black gay guy and I can personally say that Obama did nothing for me, my life only changed a little bit and it was for the worse," he wrote, per Dazed Digital. "Everything is so much better under Trump though. I feel respected –- which I never do when Democrats are involved." Browning is a white straight guy by all accounts.
People assumed that Browning was operating a sock puppet Twitter account where he espoused conservative views while pretending to be, well, a "Black gay guy." Journalist Matt Binder thought he found the burner account in question, but it ended up belonging to singer Patti LaBelle's nephew, per Vulture. Browning has since quit Twitter — his public account, at least.
U.K. Health Secretary Matt Hancock
Britons became accustomed to the sight of health secretary Matt Hancock during the COVID-19 pandemic. Hancock frequently briefed the nation about lockdowns and disease prevention measures at press conferences — and also became a subject of memes thanks to his often unorthodox body language, as documented by the Evening Standard.
But Hancock proved that COVID wasn't the only virality he needed to fear when, in June 2021, photos of him smooching a colleague blew up on the internet. The Sun obtained snaps of Hancock and aide Gina Coladangelo, let's say, breaking social distancing guidelines at a time when he was telling the people of the U.K. not to socialize with people outside of their bubbles. He ended up stepping down from his post and also divorcing his wife, who had sadly been under the impression that their marriage was "happy and stable," according to The Times.
A few months after his resignation, in January 2022, Hancock announced that he'd contracted COVID-19 a second time, according to the BBC. He tweeted that he was feeling "much better than last time and that's thanks to the vaccine."
Department of Homeland Security Press Secretary Brian J. Doyle
It's bad when anyone is caught attempting to abuse minors. But when the person who gets caught is part of a government body that's supposed to prevent that type of activity, it's enough to make you lose hope in the system entirely. Brian J. Doyle, former press secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, was caught sending pervy messages to someone he thought was a 14-year-old girl as part of an undercover online sex crime sting in 2006, according to NBC.
The person Doyle was messaging was actually a member of the Polk County Sheriff's Department, according to CNN. The sheriff's office claimed Doyle "initiated a sexually explicit conversation with her. ... Doyle knew that the 'girl' was 14 years old, and he told her who he was and that he worked for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security." He is said to have used "pretty vulgar language" with the person posing as a teen girl and sent them other explicit materials.
Perhaps most disturbing of all is the fact that preventing this sort of thing was part of the high-ranking Doyle's job. The Department of Homeland Security "is one of the federal agencies responsible for investigating online exploitation of children," according to the BBC. Seems like the calls were coming from inside the house.
California school board president Jon Venverloh — thanks to his wife, Mehridith
Even a position as low-stakes as school board trustee is subject to death by internet. Jon Venverloh found this out the hard way when his wife, Mehridith Philips Venverloh, effectively torched his budding political career by airing her opinion on then-newly-elected Vice President Kamala Harris.
After Harris became veep, Mehridith questioned the Senator's qualifications and used some colorful language to do so. "All she needs to be qualified is a black p—y! No brain needed!" Mehridith wrote on her real Twitter account with her name attached, per the New York Post. She had also tweeted disparaging things about the LGBT+ community, according to the Post, in addition to implying Harris had used sex to obtain her position.
Jon Venverloh ended up resigning from his post in the Las Lomitas school district, writing that Mehridith's tweets contained "reprehensible views that I do not agree with," according to ABC7. Talk about putting the "meh" in Mehridith.
Ohio Senate hopeful J.D. Vance
Normally, members of Congress fall in line behind the highest-ranking government official who's a member of their party — especially if that person is the President of the United States. But when Donald Trump began his presidential campaign, a sect of Republicans joined together to create the slogan "Never Trump," per The Guardian.
J.D. Vance was one such Republican — but his anti-Trump statements came back to bite him. During the 2016 presidential race, Vance described Trump as "reprehensible," according to Vanity Fair's Hive. "God wants better of us," he said of the possibility of a Trump presidency.
But after Trump won, Vance decided he, too, would like to make the leap from author (he wrote "Hillbilly Elegy," Trump has a byline on "The Art of the Deal") to politician, and he realized his anti-Trump rhetoric wasn't the best career move. He's been desperately trying to disown his 2016 tweets ever since. He told Fox News, per Mediaite, "Like a lot of people, I criticized Trump back in 2016 ... and I regret being wrong about the guy." He even palled around with Trump in Mar-a-Lago, according to Axios, and agreed with Trump's inaccurate statements that the 2020 election was rigged. As of this writing, it remains to be seen whether Vance's damage control over his prior tweets has worked. The truth will come out in the Ohio Senate election in November 2022.
MP Emily Thornberry
Emily Thornberry was a Member of Parliament in the United Kingdom in 2014 who made the mistake of apparently bashing Britons who displayed an English flag. She tweeted a photo of a home with English flags out front and added a caption reading, "Image from #Rochester," according to The Guardian. Fellow MP Simon Danczuk said this was proof the Labour Party "has been hijacked by the north London liberal elite," per the BBC, and Twitter users freaked out, calling Thornton "elitist" and a "snob." She ended up resigning from her post.
Why would a humble flag cause such a furor? A story by The Independent titled "Is flying a St George's flag an act of patriotism or a symbol of all that is bad about England?" makes it clear: Thornton appeared to be implying that the people who lived in the house were xenophobic or colonialist. And Thornberry herself expressed remorse years later in 2020 — not for the tweet itself, but for not explaining herself. "I was taking a series of photographs during a by-election in order to explain to people what a by-election is like," she said on "The Andrew Marr Show," as per The Sun. "I was asked to resign — I did; I was asked not to make any comment — I did." She added, "I don't sneer at people — it's not fair to say." She has since re-entered politics.
Sacramento Democratic Party official Allan Brauer
Whether or not you support Obamacare, most people can agree that wishing death on a political opponent's children is not the chillest of moves. But that's exactly what Sacramento Democratic Party communications chair Allan Brauer decided to publicly do on social media, shortly before kissing his nascent political career goodbye, according to Sacramento's CBS13.
After Amanda Carpenter, one of Ted Cruz's speechwriters, took to Twitter to celebrate a House vote to strip funding from then-President Barack Obama's healthcare plan, Brauer decided to respond. "May your children all die from debilitating, painful and incurable diseases," he tweeted, per the Daily Mail. Wow, Brauer, tell us how you really feel!
He did say he was sorry — but political consultant Aaron McLear told CBS13 that the apology would likely fall on deaf ears. "It's just a bad move," he said, "because whatever his point was, no one is getting that point. All they are hearing is this really low blow, and kind of horrible tweet that he sent."
San Francisco school board member Alison Collins
In recent years, more attention has been drawn to hate crimes against the Asian-American and Pacific Islander [AAPI] community. And many communities are more sensitive to what they perceive as anti-Asian rhetoric.
Then-San Francisco school board member Alison Collins, who is Black, tweeted in 2016 about bullying that her daughter had experienced. She wrote, "Many Asian Am. believe they benefit from the 'model minority' BS," also using the terms "Tiger Moms" and "house n*****," according to the San Francisco Examiner. This led school board members to remove her from "leadership positions" on the board, according to KQED, although she remained on the board.
She apologized in a post on Medium. She wrote that her tweets were "taken out of context," and at the time, she was dealing with the fact that her daughter "had recently experienced an incident in her school in which her Asian American peers were taunting her Latinx classmate about 'sending kids back to Mexico' and the KKK." Still, she wrote, "For the pain my words may have caused I am sorry, and I apologize unreservedly." Collins later sued the board over the incident but her lawsuit was dismissed in court, per KQED.
Florida Rep. Mark Foley
Yet another politician was caught allegedly sending inappropriate messages to minors in 2006. Republican Representative Mark Foley of Florida was previously known for his hard stance against child sex abuse: in 2002, he co-sponsored a bill that would have made it illegal for anyone under 17 to pose in commercial photos, effectively rendering even pictures of kids in stock images illegal, according to Wired.
That bill didn't go far — but Foley's interest in the underaged did. So far, in fact, that he was caught explicitly messaging minors four years later, according to ABC News. The former member of the House caucus on missing and exploited children (yes, seriously!) resigned and apologized, saying he was "deeply sorry."
Foley now "lives in Florida, where he runs a small business, hosts an occasional radio show and has worked as a lobbyist for the Washington Nationals," according to an essay by Zack Stanton, the page who helped expose him, in Politico. "Years ago, he was a troubled man, but by all accounts, he's sought treatment for his demons and I sincerely hope he finds happiness and peace of mind."
Texas mayor Tim Boyd
People in the southern U.S. take cold weather seriously, even if that cold weather is what northerners would consider balmy. But a former Texas mayor had no time for his residents' complaints during a historic cold snap in 2021. The February weather event wasn't just uncomfortable. It also left millions of people with no power to heat their homes as the state's electric grid struggled to keep up, according to The Guardian.
Tim Boyd, who was mayor of Colorado City, Texas, at the time, wrote an impassioned Facebook post imploring people to stop whining. "No one owes you or your family anything," he wrote, per NBC News, "nor is it the local government's responsibility to support you during trying times like this! Sink or swim, it's your choice!" He added, "If you were sitting at home in the cold because you have no power and are sitting there waiting for someone to come rescue you because your [sic] lazy is direct [sic] result of your raising."
Boyd resigned shortly after, hedging his comments by saying he was only referring to able-bodied people. "I would never want to hurt the elderly or anyone that is in true need of help to be left to fend for themselves," he wrote, according to CBS News. "I was only making the statement that those folks that are too lazy to get up and fend for themselves but are capable should not be dealt a handout."
Michigan Republican Party official Dan Adamini
The summer of 2020 was a particularly bad time to behave poorly on social media — even celebrities were being excoriated for social media posts ranging from tone-deaf to borderline racist. The world was in the thick of Black Lives Matter protests stemming from the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and others.
And one Michigan Republican Party official shocked constituents when he implied on social media that some protests should be dealt with through state-sanctioned violence. Dan Adamini, then-secretary of the Marquette County Republican Party and a former chair, posted on Twitter and Facebook that he was a big fan of the National Guard's work at Kent State University. "I'm thinking another Kent State might be the only solution protest stopped after only one death," he wrote on Facebook, per HuffPost. "They do it because they know there are no consequences yet."
He also wrote on Twitter, "Violent protesters who shut down free speech? Time for another Kent State perhaps. One bullet stops a lot of thuggery." Back in 1970, students were protesting American military involvement in Southeast Asia when the National Guard opened fire on them, per History.com. Four students died and nine suffered injuries. Adamini later apologized for his comments, saying he didn't mean to encourage more violence, according to Detroit News, and he resigned. But he had a political music career to fall back on, having recorded songs including "The Answers are all Republican" and "Blue Republican Christmas."
New York Rep. Chris Lee
Compared to some of the other infractions on this list, a shirtless pic seems like small potatoes. But it was still enough to tank the career of Chris Lee, a Republican Congressman from New York who resigned from the House of Representatives after he got caught sending one of the tamest political sexts of all time in 2011, per ABC News.
Lee had responded to a personal ad on Craigslist in which a woman wrote, "Will someone prove to me not all [Craisglist] men look like toads?" He responded, saying, "I'm a very fit fun classy guy," and, "Hope I'm not a toad." He later sent a photo of himself flexing in the mirror with no shirt on. Gossip website Gawker got ahold of the emails and photos and posted them online.
Lee, who was married with a child at the time, publicly apologized and stepped down from his congressional seat, per The New York Times. If only we knew back then what kind of wild political scandals would happen over the next decade.
President Donald Trump
The alpha and omega of political career ruin via internet has to be Donald Trump's indefinite social media ban. Trump used Twitter to keep in touch with his citizens before and during his presidency, frequently weighing in on important topics such as Kristen Stewart's love life and whether "haters and losers" deserved his "best wishes" on September 11.
But American politics' best-known tweeter kissed his favorite platform goodbye shortly after the January 6 insurrection, when a mob of his supporters barged into the United States Capitol, resulting in five deaths, according to The New York Times. Two days post-invasion, Trump tweeted, "The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!" according to Twitter. He also wrote, "To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th."
In its press release on Trump's ban, Twitter explained that it considered these tweets to be covert encouragements of violent acts. The social media company expressed concern that the tweets were "likely to inspire others to replicate the violent acts that took place on January 6, 2021." Facebook and Instagram also locked Trump's accounts, per Meta Newsroom. The former reality TV host has since dabbled in alternative platforms and even created one of his own, according to the BBC.