Texas Ag Commissioner Uses Obscenity For Clinton On Twitter
Follow CBSDFW.COM: Facebook | Twitter
AUSTIN (CBSDFW.COM/AP) - The Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller is getting heat Tuesday for a offensive tweet.
The tweet used the C-word instead of the name, Clinton when talking about a poll where Donald Trump leads Hillary Clinton.
The tweet was deleted about 10 minutes later.
A subsequent post said "the campaign was retweeting" information and "inadvertently" posted a derogatory term. It added: "Commissioner Miller finds the term vulgar and offensive" and apologized.
Commissioner Miller finds the term vulgar and offensive and apologizes to anyone who may have seen it.
— Sid Miller (@MillerForTexas) November 1, 2016
First Miller's staff said Miller's Twitter account was hacked.
Then they said it was a retweet and they didn't notice the vulgarity.
The campaign was retweeting information on Twitter today and inadvertently retweeted a tweet that they were not aware contained a derogatory
— Sid Miller (@MillerForTexas) November 1, 2016
term. The tweet was taken down as soon as possible.
— Sid Miller (@MillerForTexas) November 1, 2016
Later Miller's office blamed a staffer.
Governor Greg Abbott released a statement on the matter saying, "The language is reprehensible and is an embarrassment. No true Texas gentleman would ever talk this way."
A Trump supporter, Miller's Twitter bio describes himself as a "deplorable." Clinton once derided Trump supporters as a "basket of deplorables."
Trump in August named Miller to a list of agricultural advisers to his campaign.
Miller has caused social media stirs before. A later-deleted post from his campaign Facebook page in August 2015 appeared to endorse a nuclear bombing of "the Muslim world." Then, in November, another Facebook post from Miller compared Syrian refugees to rattlesnakes.
A former state legislator and champion rodeo calf-roper, Miller was recently investigated by the Texas Department of Public Safety after The Houston Chronicle reported that he used taxpayer money to travel to Oklahoma last year to apparently receive a "Jesus shot," or anti-inflammatory injection meant to reduce chronic pain.
Miller reimbursed the state more than $1,000 but declined to say whether he got the injection. In September, prosecutors announced that he wouldn't face charges, saying "criminal intent would be difficult to prove."
Even before Miller could post Tuesday's apology, the Texas Democratic Party expressed outrage, with Executive Director Crystal Perkins saying, "Texas families deserve better than this kind of disgusting language from their elected officials."
"It's not about one tweet, it's about a consistent pattern where the Republican Party fails to show even the most basic sense of human decency," Perkins said in a statement. "Commissioner, you're an embarrassment to Texas families and our great state."
(©2016 CBS Local Media, a division of CBS Radio Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)