'If you're offended, I am sorry,' PC leader Dennis King says of past tweets

WARNING: This story contains graphic language.

The new leader of the P.E.I. Progressive Conservative Party says he didn't mean to offend anyone with any of his tweets over the past several years, some of which he now says would not be appropriate if posted by someone in the position of a party leader.

Dennis King was named PC leader at a convention Feb. 9. He said during the leadership campaign he became aware some tweets from his account @dennyking7 were starting to circulate among party members.

Now he's asking people to consider those tweets within the context of what he was doing for a living before he became leader of a political party.

"Before this job [I] was a comedian, storyteller, and part of my job was trying to drive people to my Twitter feed … by trying to be funny," King said. He also freelanced as a political commentator for CBC.

"Now that I look through the lens of Dennis King as the PC leader, I could see where ...  people might take offence."

"If you're offended I am sorry. It wasn't the intended purpose," he said.

"If I as the leader of the PC Party today tweeted that, then I think that people should be outraged. But Dennis King-Joe Citizen who's trying to make his buddy laugh. I mean probably before I got into politics the action on that tweet would have been about five."

'Obviously in poor taste'

King had been prolific on Twitter, posting more than 5,000 tweets since opening his account in 2013. The vast majority are sports-related and would not be considered offensive.

When approached by CBC, the executive director of Women's Network P.E.I. said her group found "misogynistic language" in some of King's tweets, particularly with regards to one which included the hashtag #uglyonescounttoo.

"Women's worth is often reduced to how attractive they are viewed by men," Jillian Kilfoil said in a statement to CBC. "This tweet reinforces this and is in poor taste."

King admitted that particular tweet was "obviously in poor taste when you consider the position I'm in right now."

"Would I today as Dennis King, the leader of the PC Party make that tweet? No. But when I made that tweet I actually had no grand illusions of being in the job."

'I am who I am'

King said he provided his social media handles to the PC Party for vetting. But he said he "intentionally didn't go and cleanse my social media once these things started to circulate. Number one, it wouldn't remove the reality that I had written them."

But King also said he's trying to remain true to who he is as a person.

"I am who I am. I had a life before I got into this business. Part of the reason I'm in this business is because of that life, to be that communicator," he said.

"I'm flawed. There wasn't any white smoke coming out of the chimney of the Eastlink Centre on Saturday. We didn't elect a pope."

'You've got to delete and apologize'

CBC described the tweets to Chad Rogers, a political affairs strategist based in Toronto who has helped the federal Conservative party in the past with vetting candidates.

Rogers said a tweet from 2018 referencing Mike Hunt (a common play on words referencing female genitals) and a tweet from 2016 referring to Walmart shoppers as "inbreeders" could be described as "ignorant and dumb."

But the tweet from 2017 including the word "c***sucker", Rogers described as "homophobic."

"That's the problematic one," he said. "Homophobic, you've got to delete and apologize for."

King said that word is not his everyday language. He said he was being careful by not fully spelling it out, and that he was trying to be funny, back in the time when that's what he did for a living.

"Every one of us has said something intemperate at some point in a comment on a story in Facebook or Twitter," said Rogers. "The challenge is you can't touch racism, sexism, misogyny [or] homophobia. That's where the funny or the crude have gone too far and you have to account for them."

'We believe strongly in redemption'

Kilfoil added that politicians should not "be held hostage by previous tweets."

"We believe strongly in redemption and … we invite all Islanders to engage in a learning process of doing better and removing misogyny from their language and behaviours, this is of particular importance for all leaders in P.E.I. especially political ones."

Rogers said what the public should look for from an official who's crossed the line in their comments is "did they learn a lesson from it?"

"Learning from things that you've done that are dumb is actually what we want from our public officials."

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