Jimmy Kimmel has had a long-running segment on his show called “Mean Tweets,” and it has become very popular. The premise is both funny and eye-opening: public figures read mean tweets about themselves to prove that even celebrities have feelings and that cheap, anonymous shots are often cowardly and hurtful.
Minnesota’s Senator Al Franken riffed on that concept today and read some mean tweets directed at him about Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton since he began supporting her. The video was orchestrated by the Clinton campaign and uploaded to their YouTube channel ahead of the caucus that will take place in Minnesota on Super Tuesday next week.
His responses are actually pretty funny and are a stark reminder that at the end of every Twitter account is a real person (or team of real people!) reading the messages. Here are some of those messages:
@alfranken @HillaryClinton Boooooooooooooooo
— Ryan Elmore (@rtelmore) January 30, 2016
@alfranken *sigh* Hillary doesn’t seem to stand for almost anything you stand for.
— Robin Marsack Barber (@robinmarsack) February 19, 2016
Some of the tweets from the video have already been taken down. Twitter user BootyDude69 made quick work of alerting @ByYourLogic to their involvement in the clip and now, the original tweet is gone.
@alfranken @HillaryClinton @ByYourLogic your tweet was in this video
— erik (@bootydude69) February 25, 2016
Ultimately, none of the tweets Franken read were too vulgar or cruel, which is a little surprising because they are almost sure to exist.
[image via screengrab]
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