Forget crack. This is a presidential campaign on Twitter.
Jeb Bush‘s top guy Mike Murphy sat next to Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) on an flight to Los Angeles Friday and live tweeted the experience.
As immature as this might seem, at this point it would practically be journalistically criminal if Murphy didn’t do it.
“Rand goes with the QUICHE?” asked a shocked Adrian Walker, metro columnist for the Boston Globe, after Murphy broke the news of Paul’s breakfast preference.
Murphy began the whole thing rather quietly.
“Looks a bit familiar…” he wrote, soon adding that someone mouthed to him that yes, “it is him.” It’s presidential hopeful RAND PAUL.
Murphy takes a moment to make fun of WaPo.
Luckily, Paul is not downing Scotch.
“Rand goes with cranberry juice and sparkling water,” Murphy said. “Solid choice. I do with icewater and cranberry.”
At this point Murphy explains how stealth he’s being about all this.
“Sen. Paul and I have never met, so I don’t think he knows I, um, work in politics,” he said.
Then the trash talking begins.
- “Quiche. Making note of that. #debates.”
- “Tempted to congratulate him on Dad’s solid work in the new 1-800-DOOMSDAY infomercials but I’m a nice guy and will leave him alone.”
Murphy confessed he nearly ordered the quiche, too.
And soon enough he realizes how awkward things might get if Paul figures out who he is and what he’s doing.
“Gonna let Sen P have his privacy,” he wrote. “Have a feeling things may get a bit icy when he checks his iPad next.”
But eavesdropping on a presidential candidate is addictive. Murphy can’t stop himself.
- “Newsies will be happy to know he also reads dead tree newspapers: Wash Post and Wash Times. Nice to flight attendants too.”
- “Trying to loudly watch a Lindsey Graham speech on my Mac laptop to draw corner of eye attention, but gogo not fast enough…”
- “Looking for a crazy ISIL website to peer insanely at as I mumble about death to infidels in the air.… get him to rethink the metadata thing…”
- “Bread tray comes by. Scone or Danish?… hoping for scone choice!…Passes. Neither. Smart doctor. Guess I better pass too. Danish looked good.”
Once again Murphy says he’s done spying on Paul.
And this time he appears to mean it.
“I had my fun. Time to leave the guy alone,” he wrote. “Quiche was huge and looked great BTW.”
Part time D.C. blogger Graham Campbell warned, “You’re going to end up wearing that quiche.”