Senior U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa celebrates reaching 1 million followers on X by looking back at his most memorable posts.
Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley is once again the third presidential candidate.
Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley has been reelected as Senate president pro tempore, making him third in line for presidential succession.
“I don’t know what I did,” said Iowa’s senior senator, Chuck Grassley.
In this case, the “what” wasn’t that he devoured all of his beloved Dairy Queen Blizzard treats. Instead, the 92-year-old lawmaker took a walk down digital memory lane on Tuesday, November 18, to celebrate reaching 1 million followers on social media platform X.
The Republican senator joined the platform under the name Twitter in 2007, shortly after it launched in late 2006. Over those 18 years, he has amassed a following with his often unpunctuated posts written in Grassley’s distinctive shorthand.
“Representative government is a two-way street,” Grassley said in a recorded video message. “I’m half of them, and my voters are the other half. I need to know what they’re thinking. I can tell a lot of what they’re thinking by reading their reactions to what I post on Twitter.”
Grassley is the Senate president pro tempore and third in line to succeed the president. He said he was happy to be able to attract the attention of 1 million people.
“I think the next goal is to reach $2 million,” Grassley said.
So, what are the standout tweets over the past 18 years? Here are Grassley’s top three.
“Assume the deer is dead.”
Grassley said people often say their favorite post is “assume the deer is dead.”
He wrote late on Oct. 25, 2012, “Fred and I hit a deer on Highway 136 south of Dyersville. We continued to farm after pulling our fender and getting scraped by a tire. Please assume the deer is dead.”
“I know it sounds a little silly, but it’s because I had an accident and I was fine so I didn’t have to worry about it. So I typed to my staff and my family, ‘I think the deer is dead,'” Grassley said.
Two days later, Grassley continued, “Followers legitimately asked about the condition of the loved one who attacked our Prius, but they did not shine a flashlight on us to identify the creature.”
Find out what you know at Dairy Queen
The post, written by Grassley on November 3, 2014, became a year-long series about eating ice cream.
“Dairy Queen in Windsor Heights is a good place for you,” he posted.
Get your mind out of the groove.
“You guys probably know that I love Dairy Queens, especially Blizzard with Snickers in it. I was at the Dairy Queen in Windsor Heights, and I just wrote on Twitter that I was at the Dairy Queen because, ‘What are you talking about?'” Grassley said with a laugh. “And it got quite a response from people.”
Dead “Pet Pidgin”
Grassley continued to struggle with the problem of dead animals in 2020.
He wrote on September 19, 2020: “When I lost my pet pidgin/It’s dead in the front yard of my Iowa farm. The r identifier was found here. Right leg blue 2020/3089/AU2020/SHE ///Left leg green band has no print information. Sorry for the bad news.”
Grassley explained that he found the dead pigeon in the garden of his farm in New Hartford.
“It had a number on its leg, so I posted it on Twitter to let whoever owned this pigeon know that this pigeon wasn’t coming home,” Grassley said.
Marissa Payne covers the Iowa Capitol and politics for the Des Moines Register. Email us at mjpayne@registermedia.com.
