About midday on March 14, Republican U.S. Senator John Cornyn sat down at a black laminate table, laced his fingers around the neck of a cold bottle of Corona Extra, poured half the beer into a lowball glass and thought: Now this will make for a good tweet. Or, at least, that’s what the photo suggests. Against the background of an unidentified deserted bar or restaurant, foam lingers atop the freshly poured beer, a fat lime wedge perched on the rim, unsqueezed. To aid interpretation, the 68-year-old Texan, arguably the country’s second-most powerful senator, captioned the image: “Be smart; don’t panic. We will get us through this #coronavirus.”
Be smart; don’t panic. We will get us through this #coronavirus pic.twitter.com/SyvOAWXItK
— Senator John Cornyn (@JohnCornyn) March 14, 2020
The joke didn’t land. At the time, the White House had just declared COVID-19 a national emergency and the country was rocketing past 2,000 confirmed cases of the disease. With the economy headed off a cliff, Congress had yet to pass expanded paid sick leave, unemployment insurance, or stimulus checks. And there was Cornyn, drinking a Corona. Predictably, the tweet drew thousands of critical responses, including from a celebrity chef, a fellow senator, and political rivals. Whole articles were written.
