People have been tweeting at the wrong Patrick Kennedy over recent Hillary Clinton email allegations
Different Patrick Kennedy, guys...
It happened again.
Patrick Kennedy, a former Rhode Island congressman and member of the famed New England political family, has ended up on the wrong end of some mean tweets.
Following reports this week that the State Department’s Undersecretary of State Patrick Kennedy—who is a different person—asked FBI officials to change the classification of some of Hillary Clinton emails, the other Patrick Kennedy asked angered Twitter users to please double-check who they were tagging.
“For those of you who are new here, I am a former Congressman from Rhode Island and a mental health advocate,” he said in a statement. “To be clear, I have never served in the State Department.”
The Twitter notifications I’ve received this week warrant this brief clarification. pic.twitter.com/VEvTPhJi3W
— Patrick J. Kennedy (@PJK4brainhealth) October 19, 2016
A brief foray into Kennedy’s Twitter mentions reveals a number of tweets—often from Donald Trump supporters, often including insults—mistaking Kennedy for his namesake at the State Department.
It likely did not help that Newt Gingrich, a former speaker of the House and high-profile Trump supporter, tagged Kennedy in a tweet promoting an opiate crisis discussion in which they both were participating, just hours after tweeting out an article calling for the State Department’s Kennedy to resign.
It surely isn’t first time someone fell victim to a mistakenly addressed torrent of outrage on Twitter. And it likely won’t be the last. Perhaps Kennedy can commiserate about it with Jon Lester.
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