Mitt Romney Just Confirmed He Has a Secret Twitter Account Under the Name Pierre Delecto
After three years of suffering at the hands of the Trumpian news cycle, at last, a well-deserved gift: Mitt Romney has a secret Twitter account under the deliciously French name: Pierre Delecto. This tightly guarded state secret utter gem was revealed, at least in part, in a new Atlantic profile of the Republican senator from Utah published on Sunday night, in which he divulges that, in contrast to President Trump’s manic Twitter habits, he maintains a secret account to lurk—his term, not mine—on the online political discourse.
“I won’t give you the name of it,” Romney said, but he did drop a few hints: He’s following 688 people, including a few political writers, athletes, and Conan O’Brien (whom Romney, like a prototypical dad, referred to as “What’s his name, the big redhead from Boston?”).
This is where the journalistic magic happened: Slate political reporter Ashley Feinberg followed these scant breadcrumbs to Twitter user @qaws9876, a.k.a. Pierre Delecto, noting that he joined platform in July 2011 (a month after Romney announced his 2012 presidential run) and just so happened to be following 702 accounts (close enough to 688), including Romney’s granddaughter, Allie Romney Critchlow, as well as his eldest son, Tagg, all the other Twitter-using Romney kids, and—the smoking gun?—O’Brien. But perhaps the most triumphant moment came when Romney confirmed to The Atlantic that he is indeed Delecto, with two little words: “C’est moi.”
Not since he dined at Jean Georges with president-elect Trump in 2016 has Romney been so French, or so (marginally) interesting. Here we were thinking that the senator was straight as an arrow, clutching his Binders Full of Women; now we come to find that for the last eight years, he’s been leading a clandestine double life, tapping into an alluring alter ego—Delecto!—by which he took Twitter by storm. Or, more accurately (according to screenshots by Feinberg, taken before the Delecto account was made private): @-replying Fox News’s Brit Hume (“Loyal [sic] to principle trumps loyalty to party or person right, Brit?” read one Delecto tweet).
Why “Pierre Delecto”? Is Romney just a basic Carrie Bradshaw like the rest of us, with a penchant for berets and the way the Eiffel Tower sparkles at night? Au contraire, a young Romney did his Mormon mission work in France in the ’60s and speaks French, sparking another theory shared on his chosen lurking place, Twitter. Attorney Max Kennerly speculates that the name resembles the Latin phrase, “in pari delicto,” or “in equal fault,” a legal term used to describe a case when two parties are, well, equally at fault. (Could this be a nod to his deigning to join Twitter, with all of its time-sucking toxicity—but only secretly?) “This explanation is also super dorky,” Kennerly said, “and thus likely correct.”
Originally Appeared on Vogue
