Republican Rep. Deletes Profoundly Embarrassing Tweet After Apparently Just Now Learning How Television Works

Greg Steube is a Republican U.S. Representative from Florida, and one of the 147 Republicans in Congress who voted to block Joe Biden’s electoral certification and overturn the 2020 election. He is also a grown adult man who apparently didn’t know how television works until yesterday.

On Thursday afternoon, just ahead of the January 6 House select committee’s third public hearing, Steube tweeted his displeasure that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi gave permission for CNN (or the “Communist News Network” as Steube so classily referred to it) to broadcast from the Capitol.

“In case you forgot the sham #January6thcommitteehearings are purely for TV ratings, Pelosi let The Communist News Network build a full TV set where Abraham Lincoln’s desk once stood,” he tweeted, along with a picture of a CNN panel talking in front of a background image of the Capitol building’s Statuary Hall.

Of course, CNN was not inside the Capitol, just as that train in 1896 wasn’t actually going to break out of the movie screen and crush the audience. It was an illusion, Greg.

Apparently someone informed Steube how digital backdrops work and he deleted the incredibly embarrassing tweet not long after posting it.

That man is in a position of political power. His decisions affect our lives.

And not for nothing, Lincoln’s desk isn’t the only thing of note to have been in that spot. A year and a half ago, it also saw a few thousand rioters try to carry out a violent insurrection, which is the whole point of these hearings and that CNN broadcast in the first place.

(image: Doug Mills-Pool/Getty Images)

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Vivian Kane

Vivian Kane (she/her) is the Senior News Editor at The Mary Sue, where she's been writing about politics and entertainment (and all the ways in which the two overlap) since the dark days of late 2016. Born in San Francisco and radicalized in Los Angeles, she now lives in Kansas City, Missouri, where she gets to put her MFA to use covering the local theatre scene. She is the co-owner of The Pitch, Kansas City’s alt news and culture magazine, alongside her husband, Brock Wilbur, with whom she also shares many cats.

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