Republicans had a very unsuccessful weekend on social media
Did your beach selfie or barbecue Instagram from this weekend not garner as many Likes as you would have hoped?
If so, you can take solace in the fact that basically every major Republican had a much, much worse weekend on social media than you did. And this time, it wasn’t just Trump.
First, there was Mike Pence, Donald Trump’s vice presidential candidate and our nation’s foremost critic of the children’s cartoon “Mulan.” On Saturday, soon after accepting Trump’s veep invite in New York City, Pence tweeted this family dinner photo:
The New York Daily News reported that Pence was “widely ridiculed” for choosing to eat at Chili’s, of all places, in one of America’s great food cities; one Twitter user helpfully suggested a “great underground Italian eatery” for his next visit.
Urbanite food snobbery aside, a more pressing issue arose from the tweet. Namely: Is Mike Pence’s daughter a vampire?
In fact, this eerie photo might prove a blessing. It shows that the GOP is truly a party of diversity, appealing to both white people and Draculas.
Speaking of which: Paul Ryan also found himself in trouble over a photo post on Saturday. You might want to put on sunglasses before staring directly into this Instagram:
BuzzFeed says that people are calling the Instagram “tone deaf,” though, given the composition of the photo, it might more appropriately be called “tone blind.” Former NFL player and filmmaker Matthew Cherry deemed it “the least diverse selfie of all time.”
All of this social media mockery is diverting attention from this week’s Republican National Convention, where the GOP will present its vision for the next four years of America under a Trump presidency.
One of the RNC speakers, the Happy Days actor and Trump pal Scott Baio, tweeted out what I can only assume is a preview of his soaring oratory:
https://twitter.com/scottbaio/status/752324486276403200
When it was pointed out that this was perhaps inappropriate and misogynistic, Baio became defensive:
Actually, “Oh the horror!” would have been a solid theme for this year’s Republican National Convention.
Instead, one of the major RNC themes will be “law and order.” For starters, Republicans might want to get their Twitter and Instagram accounts under control.