Texas official and top Donald Trump supporter apologizes for calling Hillary Clinton the c-word

The GOP official said using the word was "deplorable," and denied knowing alt-righters he tweeted with often

By Matthew Rozsa

Staff Writer

Published November 2, 2016 12:10PM (EDT)

(AP)
(AP)

Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, a man who has been referred to as Donald Trump's "go-to guy" in Texas, is apologizing for a "deplorable" tweet his Twitter account sent out, which referred to Hillary Clinton as a "cunt."

"PENNSYLVANIA: NEW AUTO ALLIANCE POLL," the tweet read. "TRUMP 44 Cunt 43 Go Trump Go!"

The tweet was deleted less than 15 minutes after being initially posted, but a screenshot was grabbed by a Texas Tribune reporter.

As soon as the tweet was published, Miller came under intense fire, with Gov. Greg Abbott saying, "No true Texas gentleman would ever talk that way." Miller followed up by claiming he was hacked, tweeting that "the disgusting re-tweet has been removed and we have changed all account passwords."

Miller's slur wasn't a re-tweet, though; it was a tweet he seemingly copied and pasted from a twitter user with whom he ad interacted minutes before the tweet with the slur on Clinton.

Miller soon revised his story, however, instead arguing that the tweet had been sent out by staffers who weren't paying close attention to their work.

"I said, 'Why don't y'all just do some retweets?'" Miller explained to The Texas Tribune. "They didn't notice it had a derogatory term in it and they tweeted it out."

Late Tuesday, he told a WFAA-TV reporter that he "would never use" the word cunt. "It's deplorable. It's despicable."

This isn't the first time that Miller has faced controversy. On Monday he got into a heated exchange with an alt-right Twitter user who called pundit Milo Yiannopoulos as a "subversive Jew."

Miller was offended, claiming that he has many Jews on his staff, and adding that "Jew haters I know are liberal."

Miller is also under investigation by the Texas Rangers over out-of-state, taxpayer funded trips he took in February 2015.

He also apparently has Ted Nugent as his campaign manager.


By Matthew Rozsa

Matthew Rozsa is a staff writer at Salon. He received a Master's Degree in History from Rutgers-Newark in 2012 and was awarded a science journalism fellowship from the Metcalf Institute in 2022.

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