Appearing Sunday on Axios on HBO, Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) said he felt “embarrassed” to be labeled a “lurker” after confirming he has a secret Twitter account.
A transcript of the exchange is as follows:
MIKE ALLEN: There’s some question whether you follow President Trump. Your official account follows President Trump.
SEN. MITT ROMNEY: I have two official accounts — one is a Senate account and the other is the Mitt Romney account and those accounts are not ones I look at regularly. I do follow them, but I have an anonymous account, which is the one that I look at two or three times a day.
ALLEN: Oh, so you’re a lurker?
SEN. ROMNEY: Is that what they’re called? I’m embarrassed to be called a lurker. I’ve been called a lot of things, but being called a lurker is a new low.
The exchange between Romney and Allen comes after The Atlantic published an exposé on Sunday about the Utah senator in which he revealed he maintains a private Twitter account for the purpose of keeping up on the news.
“I won’t give you the name of it,” the lawmaker told the magazine, before adding that he follows 668 people.
Hours later, Slate’s Ashley Feinberg published an article declaring that she was all but certain that she had found the account. The Atlantic then reached out to Romney to asked whether the account — named “Pierre Delecto” — was, in fact, his.
He simply replied: “C’est moi,” which is French for “it’s me.”
Romney used the Twitter account to defend himself against detractors, including Fox News analyst Brit Hume and former CNN anchor Soledad O’Brien, who criticized the lawmaker for lacking a “moral compass.” The account has since been made private.