A tearful, unscripted moment between Tim Walz and his 17-year-old son, Gus, has unleashed a flood of praise and admiration – but also prompted ugly online bullying.
Gus Walz, who has a nonverbal learning disorder as well as anxiety and ADHD, watched excitedly from the front row of Chicago’s United Center and sobbed openly Wednesday night as his father, the Democratic nominee for vice president, delivered his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention.
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Conservative columnist and right-wing provocateur Ann Coulter mocked the teenager’s tears. “Talk about weird,” she wrote on X. The message has since been deleted.
Mike Crispi, a Trump supporter and podcaster from New Jersey, mocked Walz’s “stupid crying son” on X and added, “You raised your kid to be a puffy beta male. Congrats.”
Alec Lace, a Trump supporter who hosts a podcast about fatherhood, took his own swipe at the teenager: “Get that kid a tampon already,” he wrote, an apparent reference to a Minnesota state law that Walz signed as governor in that required schools to provide free menstrual supplies to students.
My dad would rather think he had a lazy, stupid, worthless kid than one struggling with mental illness, because somehow that would have been a greater reflection on him than my innate lazy, etc nature would.