Donald Trump Jr. “liked” a pair of tweets attacking a teen survivor of the mass school shooting in Florida that left 17 people dead — including one that suggests the boy was a fabrication of the “mainstream media.”
The tweets in question note that David Hogg, 17, is the son of a retired FBI agent, and charge that he has slammed President Trump and defended the bureau because Trump has repeatedly slimed the feds.
“@Thomas1774Paine. VIDEO: Outspoken Trump-Hating School Shooting Survivor is Son of FBI Agent; MSM Helps Prop Up Incompetent Bureau,” tweeted a user called Thomas Paine, who added a link to a video on the fringe website True Pundit showing Hogg speaking in favor of stricter gun control.
“The kid who has been running his mouth about how Donald Trump and the GOP are teaming to help murder high school kids by upholding the Second Amendment is the son of an FBI agent. David Hogg is a school shooting survivor in Florida. At least that is what the mainstream media has told us. We wouldn’t be surprised by anything involving the FBI at this point,” a story accompanying the video link said.
“If Hogg knew the shooter would snap — as he and other students have professed — perhaps he could have told his father about it. Oh but wait, his father was in the FBI. It would not have mattered anyway. That’s the funny thing about the limelight, kid. Often the lights can come crashing down on your head,” the story continued.
The second tweet the first son “liked” came from Graham Ledger, who hosts a right-wing radio show.
“@GrahamLedger: Could it be that this student is running cover for his dad who Works as an FBI agent at the Miami field office Which botched tracking down the Man behind the Valentine day massacre? Just wondering. Just connecting some dots,” he tweeted in a message that was retweeted by One America News, a conservative news network, and others.
Hogg, in a statement to BuzzFeed News, said Trump Jr. and others on the right attacking him and his classmates made him sick.
“I think it’s a testament to the sick immaturity and broken state of our government, when these people feel the need to peddle conspiracies about people that were in a school shooting where 17 people died and it just makes me sick,” he said.
“It’s immature, rude and inhuman for these people to try to destroy the people trying to prevent the death of the future of America because they won’t.”
Trump Jr. — who is in India hawking his family’s real estate business and giving a speech on foreign policy — is an avid hunter of game large and small, from big cats to prairie dogs nursing their young.
At Mar-a-Lago over the weekend, as the president polled his family and friends about possible changes in gun laws, Trump Jr. vehemently argued against advocating for even modest reforms, saying it could alienate his base and inflame the National Rifle Association, which gave $30 million to his campaign.