Are The Kids Fair Game?

Comparing And Contrasting Kids Caught Up In Politics

Editor’s note: Once again, it’s been a quiet week photo-wise from the White House. President Biden has been on a “working vacation” at his home in Rehoboth Beach, DE, so there weren’t any official photos with which to create a weekly recap pictorial.

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It was the heart-melting moment seen and heard around the world:

“Hope, Gus, and Gwen, you are my entire world, and I love you.”

That moment when Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, during his acceptance speech, expressed love for his family tugged at the heart of anyone who possessed one. I can personally attest to the tears streaming down my face as Walz’s 17-year-old son, Gus, stood up, applauded wildly, and, with tears streaming down HIS face, shouted, “That’s my dad! That’s my dad!”

And then, when they showed the replay of that moment on TV, I lost it again!

And every time I scrolled by the clip on social media, I lost it again!

And then, when my wife came home and we watched Governor Walz’s speech on YouTube because she missed it live, there went the waterworks!

This was before I learned Gus Walz was diagnosed with a non-verbal learning disorder, and it didn’t matter. All I witnessed was a son’s unconditional pride and love for his father.

The next day, of course, the “ugly” came out from the Right. I won’t dignify the responses with any graphics or links, but Ann Coulter said something really horrible about Gus Walz on “X” before deleting it. Then, radio shock host Jay Weber was pulled off the air after making some extremely horriific comments. His “sorry/not sorry” response included, “I didn’t know the kid was disabled,” as if his awful remarks would have been okay if he wasn’t. As of now, Weber is still off the air.

I think we can all agree it’s not cool or even human, right? Who trash-talks kids?

This brings me to something a friend posted a few days after the DNC convention. Their identity has been blurred because I did not have permission to use it publicly. The message is very succinct:

“Deserved support for sweet Gus by many of the same people I remember making fun of Barron.”

My friend makes a very good point. To be clear, Barron, unlike his half-siblings, has not made any public statements and has, for the most part, been out of the public eye. There was a brief flirtation in May with RNC delegates trying to bring him on board, but his mother put the kibosh on that.

There have been a couple of stories about Barron Trump bandied about the social media sphere. One was about a former nanny claiming he was cruel to animals. No major media outlet touched this uncorroborated story, and the “news” outlets that did used nothing more than some X posts as a “source.” It was a bad story and an example of the worst kind of sensational, salacious “journalism” that occasionally gives it such a bad name.

And yet, social media was peppered with these stories and some rather unkind words for the youngest Trump, and not from right-leaning users, by the way.

The same goes for stories today about Barron “missing from college.” For a few hours this afternoon, social media was hopping with rumors and innuendo.

(I have no intention of linking any of these stories here. If you’re really curious, you can look them up. I’m not giving any more attention than is absolutely necessary to make my point).

One of the differences is that no public entities, radio hosts, former elected officials, or pundits from the left weighed in on these stories. No one used them for political or public gain, clickbait, or social media “engagement farming.”

That doesn’t mean there weren’t some truly nasty comments on social media from perceptively “Anti-Trump” accounts. Which made me wonder:

Has Donald Trump so poisoned the social environment with his own vitriol and uncivilized conduct that some just don’t know where to draw the line in their responses? Is Barron “fair game” simply because he’s Donald Trump’s son, even though he, unlike his siblings, has not publicly enabled his father’s behavior? It doesn’t matter that he just turned 18 if he hasn’t said or done anything (that’s been sourced or corroborated) to incur the same wrath that we feel toward his father.

Gus Walz and Barron Trump grew up in completely different environments. We know very little about them except what we read or hear, and they have not given any personal accounts of their lives. Neither of them asked to be born into their very public existence, and neither had the choice in their respective parents’ decisions to lead public lives. The pressure is great on both of them, and unless they choose to become public figures themselves, we should treat them equally.