Elderly GOP senator sparks right-wing fury with bizarre fixation

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), 92, published yet another online post Saturday complaining about vacuum cleaners, only this time sparking right-wing backlash in the process.

For years, Grassley has spoken at length about “Beth” – a vintage Hoover vacuum cleaner that had been used by his family for close to 50 years before it broke earlier this month, leading the Iowa Republican to issue a bizarre eulogy for the household appliance. More than a week later on Saturday, Grassley expressed his disappointment that his 1966 Electrolux Corporation canister vacuum cleaner was “also broken.”

Billy Ray Todd, a former Republican Alabama state House candidate with a large online following, criticized Grassley for airing his vacuum cleaner-related grievances, arguing that the 92-year-old senator should instead “be in DC passing the SAVE Act,” President Donald Trump’s controversial voter ID bill.

Joe Dan Gorman, a conservative commentator and comedian, argued Grassley’s online post demonstrated either an “enormous detachment from reality or a giant middle finger,” suggesting the 92-year-old should instead be calling for Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) to “step down.”

And Chris Nelson, who Yahoo! News described as an independent conservative journalist, used Grassley’s post to highlight the senator’s impressive age.

“This guy is pushing 100 years old and still in the Senate,” Nelson wrote Saturday in a social media post on X. “He’s not even a boomer. He’s silent generation. His kids are boomers.”

Born in 1933, Grassley is the oldest sitting U.S. senator and the sixth-longest-serving senator in American history, having first won elected office in 1958 during the Eisenhower administration. He has represented Iowa in the Senate since 1981 and is currently the chamber's president pro tempore, putting him third in the presidential line of succession behind Vice President JD Vance and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA).