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'WrongTrump' Trends on Twitter Following Death of President's Younger Brother

 By C. Douglas Golden  August 17, 2020 at 8:25am
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Our national pastime is national political discord.

The Founding Fathers fought like caged animals, something we didn’t learn in school but which Lin-Manuel Miranda managed to mine to attain musical theater-geek immortality. We remember “The Federalist Papers,” forgetting bitter opponents of federalism penned “The Anti-Federalist Papers,” which are mostly forgotten by history.

Even Grover Cleveland — who we think of as being one of our most anodyne, inconsequential presidents, notable only for serving two non-consecutive terms and having an exquisite example of the late-19th century mustache — was the subject of one of the most controversial campaigns in history, which centered around the allegation he’d fathered a child out of wedlock. “Ma, ma, where’s my pa?” supporters of  (even more morally challenged) James G. Blaine would chant. “Gone to the White House, ha ha ha!”

Our current political climate, therefore, hasn’t given Americans any particularly unique fodder for our national pastime. We’ve found a recipe to supercharge it, though: Give countless callous dullards a handheld device that allows them to air their opinions to the world anywhere they are at any hour of the day, but make sure they only have 280 characters to do it in.

On Saturday night, the president’s younger brother, Robert Trump, died at the age of 71 in a New York City hospital.

“It is with heavy heart I share that my wonderful brother, Robert, peacefully passed away tonight. He was not just my brother, he was my best friend,” Trump said in a statement.

“He will be greatly missed, but we will meet again. His memory will live on in my heart forever. Robert, I love you. Rest in peace.”

It’s the kind of experience anyone human being should be able to at least empathize with, and Trump supporters posted condolences.

That’s what adults do.

Now, I’d like to step into the second person and address you, callous dullard.

You have that handheld device at your bedside. Perhaps it’s even in your hands as you peruse through “The Confessions of St. Augustine” or (more likely) Instagram photos where your drunk friends pretend they’re giving wine to their cats. You see the news alert at the top of your screen: “Robert Trump, the younger brother of President Donald Trump, has died.”

You don’t like President Trump. In fact, you break out in hives whenever you see someone wearing a red ballcap. You can’t watch Washington Nationals or St. Louis Cardinals games without hydrocortisone cream and Benadryl nearby. You think Alec Baldwin should be canceled for dressing up in Trumpface, even though he was just making fun of him on “Saturday Night Live.” You used to be an enthusiastic player of euchre, but you gave it up because you might have to talk about — shudder — trump cards.

But you also see, well, the president’s brother just died. Decorum calls for restraint. You don’t have to say anything. No one’s going to notice if you sit out this round of our national pastime.

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Nah, though:

WARNING: The following tweets contain graphic language that some viewers will find offensive.

Of all the Twitterites who decided to go full-in on the thoroughly distasteful joke that the Grim Reaper had made an unforced error with Robert Trump’s death, the most vocal was Bishop Talbert Swan — a leader in the Church of God in Christ and social media gadabout for whom attention is a bit like oxygen.

Swan began here:

This seemed worse coming from a man of the cloth, which is why Bishop Swan spent a fair amount of time doubling, tripling, quadrupling and quintupling down on the morality of his original statement:

Bishop Swan answers only to God — Who I can only assume looks at one of His supposed shepherds calling for the U.S. president’s death on the assumption He took the wrong Trump, then pushing back on the “mayo drippers” and “wypipo” who took exception, and thinks to Himself, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

On the other side of the fence, TheBlaze’s Sara Gonzales reminded us of Michelle Obama’s brag, “When they go low, we go high,” which doesn’t seem to apply here:

Conservative commentator and retired Army Col. Kurt Schlichter had a blunter take on things:

No, not all liberals want us — or, more specifically, the president — dead.

Would the mainstream media be attacking conservatives who reacted this way if a prominent liberal's family member died?

But you, callous dullards, couldn’t resist. You had to pick up that phone. Your thumbs and your heart were just too strong to resist the more cautious impulses coming from your brain.

The lure of that paper airplane sending your sickness out into the Twitter ether was just too great. That’s how playing the national pastime works these days, I guess.

Don’t worry. The likelihood is you’ll forget to delete it and it’ll still be around when you get offended about something far less offensive said about someone on the left.

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C. Douglas Golden
Contributor, Commentary
C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he's written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal since 2014.
C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he's written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal since 2014. Aside from politics, he enjoys spending time with his wife, literature (especially British comic novels and modern Japanese lit), indie rock, coffee, Formula One and football (of both American and world varieties).
Birthplace
Morristown, New Jersey
Education
Catholic University of America
Languages Spoken
English, Spanish
Topics of Expertise
American Politics, World Politics, Culture




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