Welcome, Parkland shooting survivors, to the ugly world of politics in 2018.
In the aftermath of last week’s school shooting in Parkland, Fla., some of the most powerful testimonies have come from the teenagers who survived the rampage. They have repeatedly detailed their harrowing experience to national news networks, many calling for stricter gun control laws while decrying President Trump for not doing enough to protect students. Others have wept with grief while telling their stories again and again.
The students have become a mobilizing force unlike any seen after previous mass shootings, planning marches and rallies in Florida and Washington — all while mourning the friends they’ve so recently lost.
They have also become a target of right-wing smears and innuendo.
Some prominent figures in the right-wing media are suggesting that the students are making it all up, or that the children are paid actors or that their talking points have been manufactured by public relations experts on the left.
An aide to a Florida legislator was even fired Tuesday after claiming two survivors who spoke to CNN were not students, but instead “actors that travel to various crisis when they happen.”
Donald Trump Jr. liked two tweets on Tuesday that peddled a conspiracy theory about a 17-year-old survivor of the Parkland school shooting, suggesting that he was “coached” to propagate an anti-Trump narrative by his father who is a retired FBI agent.
