Did you hear about the New York congressman who resigned in disgrace after sending a shirtless
pic of himself?
Turns out he's not the only politician whose career took a tumble, thanks to the Internet.
Keep watching for more.
Former U.S. Representative 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.
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 appeared on Weiner's Twitter account, 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 Twitter antics.
Women started revealing the married Weiner's sexts to the public, and he once even included
his infant son in a photo.
But it was the lewd messages he sent to a 15-year-old girl that landed him in federal
prison.
"Let me just reiterate, to my wife, how sorry I am that I did these things."
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, according
to The Cut.
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, in which the former president promoted the
lie that Barack Obama was not born in the United States.
"Why doesn't he show his birth certificate?"
For many people of color, Trump's apparent racism was a dealbreaker.
The numbers show that he lost the 2020 presidential election thanks in part to Black voters in
a few key areas.
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 do a strange impersonation on Twitter.
Just a few days after the 2020 presidential election, the Pennsylvania-based Republican
sent a confusing tweet from his verified account, writing:
"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.
Everything is so much better under Trump though.
I feel respected –- which I never do when Democrats are involved."
People assumed that Browning was operating a sock puppet Twitter account where he espoused
conservative views while pretending to be someone he wasn't.
Journalist Matt Binder thought he found the burner account in question, but it ended up
belonging to singer Patti LaBelle's nephew.
Browning has since quit Twitter — his public account, at least.
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.
She had also tweeted disparaging things about the LGBT+ community, in addition to implying
Harris had used sex to obtain her position.
Jon Venverloh ended up resigning from his post in the Las Lomitas [loh-ME-tahs] school
district.
Jon wrote in his post:
"[Mehridith's tweets contained] reprehensible views that I do not agree with."
Normally, congressional candidates 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."
Author 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, quote, "reprehensible," according
to Vanity Fair's Hive.
Additionally, in speaking about the then-possibility of a Trump presidency, Vance said, quote,
"​​God wants better of us."
But after Trump won, Vance decided he, too, would like to make the leap into politics.
Shortly after making his decision, however, Vance realized his anti-Trump rhetoric wasn't
the best career move.
He's been desperately trying to disown his 2016 tweets ever since.
Vance told Fox News,
"I've been very open about the fact that I did say those critical things and I regret
them and I regret being wrong about the guy.
I think that he was a good president."
He even palled around with Trump in Mar-a-Lago, and agreed with Trump's inaccurate statements
that the 2020 election was rigged.
"Frankly, we did win this election."
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."
Fellow MP Simon Danczuk said this was proof the Labour Party had been taken over by the
so-called liberal elite of north London, and Twitter users freaked out, calling Thornberry
a "snob" among other names.
She ended up resigning from her post.
So why would a humble flag cause such a furor?
Well, apparently Thornberry 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.
In an interview on The Andrew Marr Show, Thornberry had this to say:
"I was taking a series of photographs during a by-election in order to explain to people
what a by-election is like.
I was asked to resign — I did; I was asked not to make any comment — I did.
[...] I don't sneer at people — it's not fair to say."
Emily Thornberry has since re-entered politics.
In recent years, more attention has been drawn to hate crimes against the Asian-American
and Pacific Islander 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[ericans] believe they benefit from the 'model minority' [...] also using
the terms 'Tiger Moms.'"
This led school board members to remove her from "leadership positions" on the board,
although she remained on the board.
Collins apologized in a post on Medium.
She wrote that her tweets were, quote, "taken out of context."
Collins also 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.
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.
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.
The former member of the House caucus on missing and exploited children resigned and apologized,
saying he was, quote, "deeply sorry."
Foley now lives in Florida, where he hosts an occasional radio show and runs a small
business, according to an essay in Politico by Zack Stanton, the page who helped expose
him.
Stanton wrote in his essay:
"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."
The summer of 2020 was a particularly bad time to behave poorly on social media — even
celebrities were being dressed down 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.
Adamini wrote on Facebook:
"I'm thinking another Kent State might be the only solution [—] protest stopped after
only one death.
They do it because they know there are no consequences yet."
Back in 1970, students were protesting American military involvement in Southeast Asia when
the National Guard opened fire on them.
Four students died and nine suffered injuries.
Adamini later apologized for his comments, saying he didn't mean to encourage more violence,
and later 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."
Compared to some of the other infractions on this list, a shirtless photo 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
politics-adjacent racy texts of all time in 2011.
Lee had responded to a personal ad on Craigslist in which a woman asked for someone to prove
to her that not all men, quote, "look like toads." Lee responded by writing,
"I'm a very fit fun classy guy.
[...] 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.
If only we knew back then what kind of wild political scandals would happen over the next
decade.
The alpha and omega of political career ruin via the 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,
quote, "haters and losers" deserved his "best wishes" on September 11.
"He tweeted at you 11 times."
"I know."
"OK?
How does it feel to be tweeted at more than the president has condemned antisemitism?"
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.
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!!!"
In its press release on Trump's ban, Twitter explained that it considered these tweets
to be covert encouragements of violent acts.
Facebook and Instagram also locked Trump's accounts.
The former reality TV host has since dabbled in alternative platforms and even created
one of his own, called Truth Social, launched in February 2022.
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.
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 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.
A few months after his resignation, in January 2022, Hancock announced that he'd contracted
COVID-19 a second time.
Hancock tweeted:
"[I'm feeling] much better than last time and that's thanks to the vaccine."
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