Chrissy Teigen was very amused when Congress revealed that the White House had tried to get a 2019 tweet of hers removed, because she had insulted then-President Donald Trump. Former Twitter U.S. Safety Policy Team Senior Expert Anika Collier Navaroli revealed that the White House had reached out during the House Oversight Committee’s hearing on Wednesday, February 8. Chrissy tweeted her disbelief. “I… Oh my god,” she wrote along with a video of one of her tweets with many curse words.
Holy shit! Former Twitter employees just revealed that the Trump administration asked Twitter to remove a tweet from Chrissy Teigen calling Trump a PAB because it was mean. This hearing is backfiring on Republicans in a massive way! (H/t @Acyn) pic.twitter.com/O2GQpgbWgl
— MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) February 8, 2023
The House Oversight Committee was holding a hearing to look into Twitter’s handling of the Hunter Biden laptop story, and the committee members asked how Twitter handled requests from other politicians when asked to take down tweets, which was how Chrissy’s tweet came up. She was clearly very amused by the whole exchange, responding to one video asking for clarification about the tweet and sharing a video where the executive quoted the “derogatory” statement she made. “I am crying. I cannot go on,” she tweeted.
Rep. Gerald Connolly (D-VA) quoted one of the former president’s tweets and asked the former Twitter employee if she recalled the White House asking for it to be taken down. “Donald Trump heckled two celebrities on Twitter: John Legend and his wife Chrissy Teigen and referred to them as ‘the musician John Legend and his filthy-mouthed wife.’ Ms. Teigen responded to that email at 12:17 a.m., and according to notes from a conversation with your counsel, Ms. Navaroli, the White House almost immediately thereafter contacted Twitter to demand the tweet be taken down. Is that accurate?” he asked.
Navaroli revealed that while she didn’t field requests from government officials, she did remember one of her supervisors telling her that the White House had indeed reached out. “I do remember hearing that we had received a request from the White House to make sure that we evaluated this tweet, and that they wanted it to come down, because it was a derogatory statement directed toward the president,” she said.
After Navaroli explained that her understanding was that the White House reached out because it was derogatory, Connolly asked again if that request qualified as “inappropriate” by the White House. “I thought that was an inappropriate action by a government official, let alone the White House, but it wasn’t Joe Biden about his son’s laptop. It was Donald Trump, because he didn’t like what Chrissy Teigen had to say about him. Is that correct?” he asked.
Chrissy and her husband were both outspoken critics of Trump throughout his presidency. When he was booted from Twitter following the January 6 insurrection, she was one of the many stars who celebrated that he had finally been kicked off the social platform.