Without Twitter to offload my takes, I went heavy into about every other form of media in the last 24 hours to get it out of my system.
First, over at The Lobby Shop, the podcast I host with my Bracewell colleagues, we break down the speech and its implications in a tight 20 minutes. It’s a good listen, and I hope you’ll check it out. If you haven’t already, make sure to subscribe, and just as importantly send me your suggestions for guests and topics.
Second, I joined my friend and former NRSC colleague Ron Steslow for the Politicology Weekly Round-up, where I guested alongside Alex Thompson from Axios. Always a fun conversation, and we covered a lot of ground.
Finally, I joined Mark Halperin’s 2Way livestream of the speech and response, and got to break down both Biden’s performance and Senator Katie Britt’s response, alongside smart folks like Kevin Madden, Amie Parnes, Mark Katz, and Speaker Newt Gingrich. My segment comes around 2h41m, post-response.
And for a fun bonus plug, make sure to check out Gabe Fleischer’s POLITICO Magazine profile—and big reveal—of the legend himself, Ringwiss.
His tweets have gained renown around the Capitol for their nuanced discussions of arcane congressional rules and history, and for his comfort with correcting longtime lawmakers and Washington journalists alike. His following is only around 4,000, but it’s a well-connected bunch, including congressional chiefs of staff, committee staff directors and other leading insiders.
“He’s just a complete parliamentary obsessive and savant, really like no one I’ve ever met, even people in the parliamentarian’s office,” Glassman told POLITICO Magazine.
The catch: Nobody knows who he is.
Everyone has their theories. “My guess is somebody who worked for one of the leaders for many years,” said Martin Paone, who spent three decades working in the Senate Democratic cloakroom and now lobbies for Prime Policy Group. “It takes a long time to pick up the knowledge that he seems to have.”
Some suspect a former parliamentarian, or maybe a staffer at the Congressional Research Service. One House staffer thinks he must be fueled by AI, almost a ChatGPT for the congressional set. “I am convinced @ringwiss is the ghost of all the previous Senate parliamentarians, and that’s why he knows so much,” a former Senate aide recently wrote.
“There’s an actual parlor game on Capitol Hill among staff who are trying to figure out who he is,” Republican lobbyist Liam Donovan said in an interview. “Because he must be someone, right? He must be one of theirs.”
But he’s not. In fact, @ringwiss has never even stepped foot in the Capitol, much less worked there. The account, which lists its location as “Durham,” uses Homer Simpson’s head as a profile photo and frequently runs circles around veteran congressional experts, is run by Kacper Surdy, a 20-year-old economics student at Durham University in England. He is revealing his identity here for the first time publicly; previously, he has seemed to enjoy the Washington parlor game of trying to guess it, retweeting or engaging with those who try.
I’m a bit bummed that the mystery has been solved, but the plot twist is a delightful one. I shared a few anecdotes, so be sure to read the whole thing.