Grassley mourns Beth, a vintage vacuum that starred in his posts

Cam Kettles, Bloomberg News on Aug 8, 2026

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Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley said goodbye on Saturday to his longtime friend and recent internet celebrity, a nearly 50-year-old vacuum cleaner named Beth.

“U willl see Beth no more,” Grassley wrote in a eulogy to the Hoover appliance on X, where the vacuum and his signature abbreviated and un-punctuated style are well known among the 92-year-old senator’s social-media audience.

“See black that’s from electrical sparks. It’s not safe to use anymore,” wrote the senator from his Iowa home after an all-night Senate session in Washington. He shared a photograph of the vintage appliance in the post, with a finger pointing to a charred spot on what appeared to be the vacuum’s power cord.

“GOOD BYE BETH. U hv been a real workhorse. Ur namesake still is hard worker. I will miss u,” Grassley said of the vacuum, named after someone he once worked with.

Beth — which Grassley said has been in the family since at least the 1980s — was a regular fixture of the senator’s active X and Instagram presence, albeit usually on holidays. In a post around Thanksgiving in 2023, he posted a clip of himself vacuuming the floor with Beth that generated about 1.4 million hits.

In another post in August 2025, Grassley praised Beth’s dependability at a family reunion. In another post in December, he apologized to Beth for putting the vacuum to work on Christmas.

Many X users left comments in response to Grassley’s Saturday post, offering their condolences and respects. Some users suggested that Beth could still make a comeback, however, suggesting that the damaged part could be replaced.

There is another social media sensation from the GOP that emerged in May and may fill Beth’s absence: Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy’s elliptical trainer is named Margaret.