Sen. Chuck Grassley Honored for Wacky Tweets and Voting Record
Sen. Chuck Grassley was honored for casting 12,000 votes - and tweeting.
— -- It’s probably the first time anyone’s been honored on the Senate floor for tweeting about Snickers ice cream from Dairy Queen.
But that’s exactly the distinction Sen. Chuck Grassley, who is known for his irreverent and sometimes incomprehensible Twitter dispatches, received today as he was praised for casting his 12,000th vote last week.
Of the votes cast over Grassley’s career, the last 7,474 of them were consecutive -– the second longest straight voting record in Senate history.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said how devoted Grassley is to his constituents –- when he’s not in DC voting, he’s back home meeting with Iowans.
“No wonder he began his ascent into Twitter legendom with four simple words: attending events in Iowa,” McConnell said.
“That tweet is hardly as infamous as ‘assume deer dead’ or ‘staff has now informed me of what a Kardashian is -- I'm only left with more questions’ but it captures our colleague perfectly in less than 140 characters.”
The “Kardashian” tweet was actually posted by Rep. John Dingell, who rivals Grassley with his Twitter musings.
McConnell then referred to a puzzling tweet Grassley sent last month: “I'm at the Jefferson, Iowa Dairy Queen doing, well, you know what.”
No one was really sure what the “you know what” really was, but today McConnell had an answer.
“At the end of every annual 99-county swing, Sen. Grassley has a ritual: He gets a Blizzard from Dairy Queen. Sometimes chocolate, sometimes vanilla, but always, always swirled with Snickers," McConnell said. "This year he got to DQ so early he had to wait in the parking lot for it to open. And of course since this is the senior senator from Iowa, he tweeted about it."
It’s actually not even the first time Grassley gave an ode to Dairy Queen on Twitter -– his first mention of “you know what” was a year ago, on Nov. 3, 2014.
Grassley also received a doughnut cake from his fellow Iowa senator, Joni Ernst, in honor of his milestone vote.
ABC News' Veronica Stracqualursi contributed to this story.