WHINE WEDNESDAY: Van Orden’s Twitter Use Wrapped
Welcome to Whine Wednesday with Derrick Van Orden, America’s fiercest keyboard warrior. We comb through the hundreds of tweets DVO posts during a week so you don’t have to. Grab a glass and join us for Whine Wednesday!
MADISON, Wis. — Van Orden has had quite the head-spinning week as evidenced by his 174 tweets. From defending drinking on the job to claiming the war in Iran is actually a good thing, you can find all the highlights (or lowlights) of Van Orden’s online presence this past week below.
DVO’S DADDY OF THE WEEK: KASH PATEL
Van Orden has spent the last week throwing himself on a grenade for Kash Patel, passionately defending the FBI Director’s alleged habit of drinking on the job. And really — do we even need to explain why this is funny? Look, we’re a whine club, we get — but there’s a right time and place for extracurricular activities. That being said, given his history, Van Orden sees no problem with drinking on the job. We all remember his senate page incident right?
Hard to tell if this defense is political loyalty or if it just comes out of solidarity. As far as he’s concerned, this isn’t a fireable offense. It isn’t even newsworthy. It’s just a Tuesday. A normal, productive, slightly blurry Tuesday.
WORST TAKE: The war is unpopular because of biased media
Van Orden spent a better part of his week attacking the “mainstream media” for their coverage of the Trump administration’s illegal war with Iran. He is apparently convinced that bad press, and not an actual war, is what is driving unpopularity.
I hate to break it to him, but voters tend to notice rising gas prices, a worsening cost-crisis, and the fact that we have lost over a dozen soldiers with many more injured, and can do so without a cable news channel telling them how to feel. The media didn’t make the war unpopular, the war made the war unpopular.
But this is what happens when a congressman stops representing his district and starts cosplaying as a full-time Trump administration spokesperson. Van Orden is continuing to ignore his constituents, presumably stalking the streets of DC finding any way to do Trump’s bidding.
GROK IS THIS TRUE?
This week, Van Orden revealed a budding new affection for Grok — Elon Musk’s AI model that lives inside of X, formerly known as Twitter (We imagine we hated writing that sentence as much as you hated reading it). Van Orden has been using the AI model to argue about military operations for him — which would be embarrassing for anyone, but is especially rich coming from a man who ran for office trying to convince voters that he is some sort of military intellectual.
If you are going to spend years positioning yourself as an expert on the military and the history of war, it’s probably not a good sign that you have to use a chatbot to make your arguments for you. It undercuts the brand!
EMPTY PROMISES: Van Orden will fight for veterans (except the ones in his own district that have explicitly asked him for help)
Van Orden may be suffering from a bit of memory loss this week — possibly the result of a Kash Patel solidarity happy hour. He promised this week that he would “take every measure to help every man and woman that served our country in uniform.” That is quite remarkable coming from a man who has taken zero measures on Klein Hall, a veterans home in Van Orden’s district that closed its doors last September.
Ever since, constituents have been calling out Van Orden for his lack of action. He has consistently had the same response, which is usually something along the lines of “this isn’t my fault it’s theirs,” “it’s not my problem,” and “please stop asking me about this so I can finish a very important tweet about media bias.”
While Van Orden is making empty promises on Twitter, the veterans in his district are still waiting for him to actually support them.
Sincerely,
DVO’s Whine Club
