Sid Miller, the Texas Agriculture Commissioner who was also serves as co-chairman of Donald Trump’s agriculture advisory team, has said a number of strange things, like the time he argued that the Civil War was about free speech, not slavery. But it was still shocking to see him call Hillary Clinton a c-word Tuesday afternoon on Twitter:
Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller appears to call @HillaryClinton the C-word: pic.twitter.com/AwM7RLaHkC
— Patrick Svitek (@PatrickSvitek) November 1, 2016
The tweet was widely denounced and quickly deleted by Miller. His initial explanation for how it was posted in the first place? He’d been hacked.
People were rightly skeptical about that explanation, and rightly so, as whoever manages Miller’s Twitter account quickly deleted the “HACKED” tweet, too.
A short time later, the Miller team trotted out a second explanation — the offensive smear appeared on Miller’s account thanks to an errant retweet.
His office released this statement:
The campaign was retweeting information on Twitter today and inadvertently retweeted a tweet that they were not aware contained a derogatory term. The tweet was taken down as soon as possible. Commissioner Miller finds the term vulgar and offensive and apologizes to anyone who may have seen it.
But that’s not right either. Miller’s offensive tweet clearly wasn’t a retweet. In fact, it appears to have been taken nearly verbatim from a white supremacist Twitter account who used the c-word at least a half-dozen times on Wednesday morning alone:
https://twitter.com/TheRickyVaughn/status/793548909532614656
Miller and Gaius follow each other on Twitter. Not only that, but Miller seemingly looks to Gaius’s feed to copy-and-paste content for his own account. Given that, it’s hard to take seriously the “sorry if you were offended” apology Miller offered:
Commissioner Miller finds the term vulgar and offensive and apologizes to anyone who may have seen it.
— Sid Miller (@MillerForTexas) November 1, 2016
In August 2015, Trump infamously said he’s “going to surround myself only with the best and most serious people… We want top of the line professionals.” In recent months, various Trump advisors have called for Clinton’s execution, explained about the numerous sexual assault allegations he faces as nothing more than “man-shaming,” and reportedly met in secret with Russian officials suspected of trying to influence the presidential election.
Either Trump has an unusual notion of who “the best and most serious people” are, or the claim itself, like so many others he’s made, hasn’t turned out to be true.