Last night at around 7 p.m. Gov. Rick Perry tweeted an image from the blog the Patriot Post, which included a meme calling Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg “the most drunk democrat in Texas.”
The meme, which you can view below, reads “I don’t always drive drunk at 3x the legal blood alcohol limit…but when I do, I indict Gov. Perry for calling me out about it.” Perry since walked back the retweet but, it seems, not quickly enough. The tweet was picked up by screen-grabbers nationwide, garnering coverage from Mashable and the Huffington Post among others.
Shortly after, Perry deleted the tweet, saying he didn’t condone its message.
The meme, courtesy of the right-leaning Patriot Post blog, posits Lehmberg as "The Most Interesting Man in the World" from the Dos Equis ad campaigns.
Perry was indicted by a grand jury in Austin on felony charges for abuse of his office. He allegedly threatened to veto funds for Travis County's Public Integrity Unit, a statewide anti-corruption unit, unless Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg, didn’t resign in the wake of drunk driving arrest in 2013.
Perry's indictment, however, didn't come from Lehmberg. San Antonio-based attorney Michael McCrum investigate and later assembled a grand jury on behalf of the state, ultimately charging the governor with two felonies; abuse of official capacity and coercion.
After some online scrutiny Perry deleted the tweet:
A tweet just went out from my account that was unauthorized. I do not condone the tweet and I have taken it down.
— Rick Perry (@GovernorPerry) September 1, 2014
Whether or not it was Perry behind the wheel of the account is up for debate. It's worth noting, however, Perry's campaign touted to the Austin American-Statesman in his 2010 gubernatorial campaign that he ran one of his Twitter accounts – specifically, the @GovernorPerry account which retweeted the Lehmberg image.
