Jeb Bush Aide Quits Over Offensive Tweets

New CTO's thoughts on 'sluts' embarrass Jeb's PAC
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Feb 11, 2015 12:26 AM CST
Updated Feb 11, 2015 5:00 AM CST
Jeb Bush Aide Quits Over Offensive Tweets
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush pauses while speaking at a Detroit Economic Club meeting last week.   (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

If the chief technology officer Jeb Bush's PAC hired this week had been savvy enough to clean up his social media history sooner, he would probably still be in the job. Instead, Hipster.com co-founder Ethan Czahor resigned yesterday after offensive tweets going back as far as 2009 surfaced, CNN reports. Hours after he was named as CTO for the ex-governor's "Right to Rise" committee, BuzzFeed discovered that old tweets containing Czahor's musings on subjects like "sluts," gay men at his local gym, and drunk driving were disappearing by the dozen. Sample: "Most people don't know that 'Halloween' is German for 'night girls with low self-esteem dress like sluts.'" After the tweets were highlighted, Czahor said he had deleted old jokes he no longer found funny or appropriate.

The Bush team initially stood by him, saying he was a "great talent in the tech world" who had deleted the old tweets at their request, TPM reports. But then new comments surfaced yesterday in which Czahor, on a 2008 college radio show, mentioned Martin Luther King Jr., saying the civil rights leader "was a well-dressed, extremely well-spoken man; he didn't have his pants sagged to his ankles, and he wasn't delivering his speech in 'jibberish' or 'slang,'" the Huffington Post reports. The attention may have been too much for Bush, who is "actively exploring" a 2016 White House bid. "While Ethan has apologized for regrettable and insensitive comments, they do not reflect the views of Gov. Bush or his organization and it is appropriate for him to step aside. We wish him the best," a Bush spokeswoman says. (More Jeb Bush stories.)

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