So, in the aftermath of Thursday’s win, the person in charge of Washington’s Twitter account decided to have a little fun with the team’s division lead. Attaching a screenshot of the NFC East standings, Washington tweeted “STOP THE COUNT!”
Trump’s tweet has been the source of jokes among the sports community. Washington decided to join in on the fun, and tweeted “STOP THE COUNT!” with a screen capture of the NFC East standings. The joke being that despite there being five more games to play, the football team wants the season to end now it’s in first place.
Hours later, the tweet was deleted.
It doesn’t take a keen political observer to understand just what Washington was referring to with its tweet, nor does it take a seasoned NFL observer to assume why the team took it down.
Washington also had the same post on its Instagram page, and deleted it from there as well.
While teams don’t typically explain why they delete posts, the decision likely came from the front office. Social media managers have some leeway with what they’re able to post, but sometimes the bosses step in and request a change.
Even at 4-7 and on their third starting quarterback, it’s a fun time to be the Washington Football Team.
It beat its rival Dallas on Thanksgiving, demolishing the Cowboys 41-16. It even used a fumblerooski to do it. That all adds up to an improbable lead in the comically putrid NFC East.
Earlier this month, “Stop the count!” became a popular refrain for President Donald Trump and his supporters as multiple swing states tried to count legally cast votes. While Trump held leads in the official ballot counts of Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia as the traditional Election Night ended, those counts included a disproportionately low amount of votes from overwhelmingly Democratic cities as well as mail-in votes that also skewed left.
Because counting those remaining ballots — which, again, were cast legally — was slowly chipping away at Trump’s chances of re-election, Trump started demanding that the ballots stop being counted. Just like a football team would want to stop playing games if it suddenly held an improbable division lead.
