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Meet the Man Judging the Hell Out of TV Pundits’ and Politicians’ Homes
Room Rater is the latest and maybe best piece of flamethrowing from an anti-Trump Twitter provocateur
A former travel photographer and White House staffer under Bill Clinton, Claude Taylor is now best known as one of Twitter’s foremost Trump antagonists. Taylor regularly rails against the president, relying on a patchwork network of unconventional (and sometimes faulty) sources to deliver scathing anti-Trump rants. He also created Mad Dog PAC, an anti-Trump group that has garnered attention for its inflammatory billboards.
Earlier this month, Taylor launched a new Twitter campaign: Room Rater. With so many pundits and politicians recording on-air news segments from the confines of their homes, Taylor and his girlfriend, Jessie Bahrey, offer biting criticisms of their interior decor: Madeleine Albright’s oversaturated library, for example, earned just a four out of 10 (“She won the Balkan War. Bombed here,” Room Rater decreed), while Mike Pence’s office was deemed “Unimaginative” and received a rating of just two out of 10. People seem to have taken to the joke: In a few weeks, the account has accrued some 50,000 followers.
GEN spoke to Taylor over the phone for more intel on exactly what makes for a good pandemic-era TV background for pundits sequestered at home.
GEN: How did the idea for Room Rater come about?
Claude Taylor: I was talking with my girlfriend, and we just started doing it together. It was really just meant to be lighthearted quarantine content. These Skype rooms or Zoom rooms are, for the most part, different talking heads’ dining rooms, living rooms, and kitchens. It’s an unexpected intimacy. I think many people were mentally doing what Room Rater was doing — we just started tweeting about it. I think it’s one of those things that if it hadn’t been invented by us, somebody would’ve had to do it.
Well, you’ve been looking at a lot of rooms. Who’s got the best-looking room?
I think a lot depends on taste. Personally, I like John Heilemann’s kitchen probably more than any other space. Steve Schmidt’s, I don’t as much. I think it’s a little sterile. Tom Nichols I thought…
