Sid Miller’s Twitter feed is filled with polls showing Donald Trump ahead, links to hacked emails published by WikiLeaks and other anti-Hillary Clinton tweets. | AP Photo Texas elected official calls Clinton a 'c---' The Texas Agriculture Commissioner has since deleted the tweet, claimed he was hacked, deleted the claim of being hacked, issued an apology for the original tweet and blamed his staff.

Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller on Tuesday posted, then quickly deleted, a tweet in which he referred to Hillary Clinton as a “c---.”

The tweet from Miller’s account posted what appeared to be the results of a recent Pennsylvania poll, but swapped out Clinton’s name for the misogynist epithet.


“PENNSYLVANIA: NEW AUTO ALLIANCE POLL,” he wrote. “TRUMP 44 C*** 43”

He added: “Go Trump Go!”

The post was retweeted at least five times before it disappeared from Miller’s page.

Miller, who serves as part of Donald Trump’s Agricultural Advisory Committee, and his office then scrambled, offering two contradicting explanations for the tweet and saying it was a staffer, not Miller, who used the epithet.

First, the account tweeted: “@MillerForTexas HAS BEEN HACKED.The disgusting re-tweet has been removed and we have changed all account passwords. Be advised.” That tweet was almost immediately deleted.

Then came a statement, also via the Twitter account: “The campaign was retweeting information on Twitter today and inadvertently retweeted a tweet that they were not aware contained a derogatory term. The tweet was taken down as soon as possible. Commissioner Miller finds the term vulgar and offensive and apologizes to anyone who may have seen it.”

That statement is not entirely accurate. The tweet was not retweeted, but manually re-posted by Miller’s own account. It appears the text of the tweet was first posted by a pro-Trump, alt-right account, @TheRickyVaughn, who also used the epithet to describe Clinton. Miller, however, modified the item to add "Go Trump Go!"

Reached by phone, Miller said the remark was accidentally “retweeted” by a staffer while he was in a meeting.

“They found some interesting poll numbers that included some derogatory language that I would never use,” Miller said. “When I found out about that, I told them to take it down immediately.”

When pressed on the fact that the Tweet was original — not a retweet — Miller said he wasn’t sure what happened, but surmised that his staff may have copied the language from elsewhere.

“I can assure you I did not post that,” he said. “Maybe the staffers took a screen shot and posted that.”

He added: “I’m sorry to anybody out there. That’s not something I would condone or knowingly do.”

Last week, Miller mocked Clinton on Twitter for not posting her own tweets: “#CrookedHillary needs a dozen people to check her tweets,” he wrote, linking to a leaked email that showed Clinton staffers discussing a tweet. “My thoughts are my own. Healthy as a bull here. #wikileaks.”

Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott was not amused. “The language is reprehensible and is an embarrassment,” he told the Texas Tribune. “No true Texas gentleman would ever talk this way.”

Miller’s Twitter feed is filled with polls showing Trump ahead, links to hacked emails published by WikiLeaks and other anti-Clinton tweets. He describes himself on the page, which is not verified, as: “Deplorable, Champion Calf Roper, 12th Commissioner of Texas Agriculture.” His official campaign website from the 2014 campaign links to the Twitter account.

Miller, who was elected agriculture commissioner in 2014, is known for courting controversy. The treasurer and co-chairman of his campaign for agriculture commissioner was rocker Ted Nugent, who once called President Barack Obama a “sub-human mongrel.”