What began as an innocuous tweet about Detroit City Council President Charles Pugh turned into a Twitter boxing match, with the politician delivering most of blows to an intern at Automotive News — an auto-focused industry publication.


The intern, Josh Sidorowicz, had agreed with the gist of an opinion piece criticizing Pugh for spending too much time concentrating on sharing the secrets of his successful weight loss program (he lost 60 pounds) and not enough time saving the crumbling city from disastrous economic collapse.

The Detroit News opinion piece Sidorowicz had commented upon was mainly focused on Pugh's evangelical adoption of a weight loss method that had allowed him to shed 60 pounds in a year. Laura Berman, the article's author, praised Pugh for his achievement (although poking slight fun at his fanatical devotion to weight loss), but ended with a politically critical sting.


All Sidorowicz did, more or less, was agree.

There used to be a Storify embed here, but Storify doesn’t exist anymore.

G/O Media may get a commission LG 75" 8K TV Buy for $2150 from BuyDig Use the promo code ASL250

As demagogues throughout history have proven, there's no better way to silence the voice of opposition than by badgering them. Even though Pugh appears to be trying to trample his detractors' free speech rights, he is, at the very least, engaging with his constituency. Oh, and he's really good at losing weight, apparently.


Photo credit: CouncilPresidentPugh/YouTube

(Hat tip to Aaron Foley!)