Short live-stream segment in which TJ Walker advises elected officials to be cautious about retweeting content. He cites an anecdote involving Congressman Darrell Issa retweeting an image purportedly of Lee Harvey Oswald (the Kennedy assassin), noting that such retweets can appear to endorse reprehensible figures and harm reputations—especially when social-media duties are delegated to young staff judged by follower/count metrics.
Chapters
Lesson for elected officials, be careful who and what you retweet. Congressman Darrell Issa likes to retweet people, especially people in his district, people who advocate and stand up for the military. I understand that politically, or at least somebody in his office retweets it. But things got a little messy last week. Someone said, here's Uncle Lee in his uniform, and Congressman Issa retweeted it. Well, it turned out to be Lee Harvey Oswald who killed President Kennedy, or at least many people believe he killed President Kennedy. So this is embarrassing when you're seen retweeting and essentially almost like you're putting praise on monsters, murderers and other disreputable people. So be careful who you retweet. You can say it's not an endorsement, not seen as an endorsement, but it is seen as an endorsement, especially if you are an elected official. Now, what happens in a lot of congressional offices is this is sort of delegated to the 23 year old on staff. And they're often judged on the metric of how many tweets, how many followers. You could certainly have some standards, but you always have to look at the overall quality standard. If you're seen as glorifying Nazis or presidential murderers, that's not going to be a net positive.