Outspoken AG candidate Jarchow auto-deletes older tweets
It’s not terribly unusual for public officials to get bounced from social media when they say something outrageous.
But have you ever heard of a candidate for statewide office canceling himself on Twitter?
That’s what former Rep. Adam Jarchow, candidate for state attorney general, appears to be doing these days.
Back in December, Jarchow installed an app that lets him automatically delete, on a daily basis, all tweets that are more than 30 days old, according to his campaign.
The service, called TweetDelete, has resulted in the candidate wiping out hundreds and perhaps thousands of posts on his social media, including some highly controversial statements.
Gone now is the tweet in which the former GOP lawmaker labeled former President Donald Trump’s attack on three Wisconsin Republicans last summer as “dumb and insane” and “pure bullshit.” Same goes for Jarchow’s tweets touting Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and suggesting Trump has “baggage” and lacks “actual political skills.”
Nowhere to be found on his Twitter feed are his thoughts on COVID-19 vaccines, though responses to his posts are still there. (Jarchow’s original post says, “This Tweet was deleted by the Tweet author.”)
Also missing are several tweets taking aim at Milwaukee and its leaders.
“Not one red cent for Milwaukee,” Jarchow wrote on April 28, 2021, in response to Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley’s complaint about a lack of funds for the county. “This is a mess of their own making. Let them fix it.”
This tweet and others cited here were recovered by the Journal Sentinel and others.
Jarchow is taking on Fond du Lac County District Attorney Eric Toney in the Republican primary this fall for the right to challenge Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul in November.
So why is Jarchow systematically deleting his old tweets? The app permits Twitter users either to erase all their old tweets at once or to do so automatically by running the app on a schedule. Jarchow has his set so each day it deletes all tweets more than a month old.
Using the service seems an odd decision for the former two-term lawmaker known for his outspoken manner.
In fact, Jarchow was bounced from Twitter early last year in the wake of the social media firm’s decision to oust Trump from the platform, his campaign says. Jarchow then tweeted that Iran’s supreme leader was still on Twitter but not the former U.S. president.
Shortly thereafter, his account was shut down. He was allowed to return to Twitter a few months later and is now posting multiple times daily on campaign and political matters.
But for some reason, Jarchow decided to install TweetDelete on his Twitter feed two months ago. The app suggests that it be used to keep “a new employer seeing something regrettable that you said on Twitter a couple of years ago.”
A new employer like, say, the voters of the state of Wisconsin.
Among the tweets removed from Jarchow’s feed was his statement in response to Toney’s call for the state Department of Justice to have original jurisdiction to prosecute crime in Milwaukee.
“That means taxpayers statewide are now funding both the current county DAs and new prosecutors from the AG’s office,” Jarchow wrote on Nov. 5, 2021. “Not really fair to the rest of the state.”
County prosecutors are already funded by the state.
In a statement, Toney accused his opponent of supporting legalized marijuana — Jarchow pushed legislation to effort to decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana — and opposing more state resources to combat violent crime in Milwaukee.
“These are failed policies that won’t end the historic violence and make families safer,” Toney said.
But Jarchow pushed back on the criticism, arguing that his old tweets and past statements “have been reviewed and reported on at length.”
“With violent crime on the rise across Wisconsin, it’s long overdue that key leaders stop fanning the flames of violence and start getting serious about equipping our brave men and women in uniform with the resources needed to protect our communities,” Jarchow said in a statement.
Legally, there are no problems with Jarchow, 43, deleting his month-old tweets from his @AdamForAG account because he is not a public official and is not subject to open records laws. He ran and lost a bid for the state Senate in 2018 and has been in private practice ever since.
But that has not stopped him from airing his political views publicly.
On several occasions, Jarchow raised questions about Trump on Twitter, according to snapshots of since-deleted tweets. In 2016, he was a Trump delegate at the Republican National
Convention.
On June 16, 2021, Jarchow tweeted that Republicans were wrong to think that the former president had won the election in November 2020 over President Joe Biden. Two months later, he also posted that Trump had narrowly lost the state, saying the former president was very slightly “less popular” than down-ballot Republicans — a position that Trump rejects even though he has no evidence to back his position.
On several occasions, Jarchow used his Twitter feed to talk up DeSantis as the potential Republican presidential nominee in 2024.
“@GovRonDeSantis is like Trump but with actual political skills,” Jarchow tweeted on Aug. 25, 2021. “Love him.”
Two months later, he tweeted that Trump was one of the best presidents in memory, but he added, “In DeSantis, we get all the great Trump policies and much of the strident, anti-establishment attitude so many of us came to admire, without the baggage.”
Also in October, Jarchow posted that Trump was “about ego.”
But Jarchow reserved his harshest criticism for Trump in late June after the one-term president accused three Republican legislative leaders of covering up corruption in the 2020 presidential election in Wisconsin.
Jarchow called it a “dumb” and insane” attack on the trio of Wisconsin GOP leaders. He said the former oneterm president was “outside his mind” for his criticism.
“Trump should focus on helping us win back the House and Senate and to beat Evers,” Jarchow tweeted on June 25, 2021. “What he is doing is the opposite of that. I have been a Trump supporter. But this is bullshit. Pure bullshit.”