John Dingell, the longest-serving US representative in history, who died on Thursday at the age of 92, leaves behind him an important legacy — and a pretty great Twitter account.
John Dingell was great at Twitter
“Maybe we should all just delete our accounts.”
Emily Stewart covered business and economics for Vox and wrote the newsletter The Big Squeeze, examining the ways ordinary people are being squeezed under capitalism. Before joining Vox, she worked for TheStreet.
The Michigan Congress member, who served in the US House of Representatives from 1955 to 2015, has for years been one of the most fun figures to watch on social media. His Twitter account demonstrated a biting humor and quick wit as he weighed in on politics, sports, and culture.
Just last week, he took a shot at former Starbucks chair and CEO Howard Schultz, who is weighing an independent run for the White House in 2020. “Someone told me that the man behind everyone’s favorite coffee cup might run for President and I just want to wish @TimHortons the very best. You have my support,” he wrote, referring to the Canadian coffee company.
When President Trump weighed in on the ongoing scandal surrounding Virginia’s governorship over the weekend, Dingell quipped, “Buddy, I think you might want to sit this one out.”
Dingell’s Twitter feed was lively up until the end: Wednesday, the day before he died, Dingell tweeted that he had, after “long negotiations” with his wife, Debbie, gotten her to agree to keep up with Twitter. “I just want to thank you all for your incredibly kind words and prayers,” he tweeted.
Dingell, whom the Wall Street Journal in 2014 called Congress’s “breakout star on Twitter,” has had a lot of great tweets over the years. After his passing on Thursday, a 2017 tweet he sent in the wake of racist violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, swept across the internet.
Dingell started his Twitter account in 2010 and amassed more than 250,000 followers. Here are some of his best tweets from over the years:
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