Donald Trump Jr. has liked a tweet criticizing a teenage survivor of Florida’s high school massacre last week which suggest he was not really there and cannot be trusted because he is the son of a retired FBI agent.
The tweet mocks 17-year-old David Hogg, a student journalist who fled gunman Nikolas Cruz along with his classmates at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland on Wednesday.
Since the shooting, Hogg has been relentless in his calls for tighter gun laws and has repeatedly asked the president to do more to end gun violence.
In one interview he told how his 51-year-old father, Kevin, was a retired FBI agent and said it was ‘disgusting’ for the president and his family to blame the shooting on the bureau which missed several warning signs that Cruz was dangerous.
On Saturday, Twitter user Thomas Pine shared a link to a True Pundit story which poked holes in Hogg’s comments.
It touted him as an ‘outspoken, Trump-hating school shooting survivor’ and the headline of the story was: ‘MSM Helps Prop Up Incompetent Bureau.’
In the body of the story, the writer wrote cruelly: ‘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.’
Trump Jr, who is an avid hunter, liked it among a string of other conservative tweets which suggested gun reform would do nothing to prevent more mass shootings.
Donald Trump Jr. liked a tweet on Tuesday which criticized one of the Florida school shooting’s survivors and suggested his comments about gun reform could not be trusted because he was the son of a former FBI agent
Donald Trump Jr. is in India promoting for meetings at his family’s Delhi hotel this week to house hunters who can now buy apartments in it
‘While the media allowed Hogg to adorn us with his worldly teen views on the Constitution, they conveniently left out the part where the FBI was warned that the Florida school shooter had promised to shoot up a school — at least twice — long before the massacre that killed 17 students last week.’
It then appeared to blame Hogg for not telling his parents or school officials about their concerns about Cruz.
‘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 New York Post reports that Donald Jr. liked a second tweet which repeated the criticism.
It was written by The Daily Ledger host Graham Ledger and said: ‘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.’
Hogg, who is organizing a rally in Washington DC next month with his classmates, said he was ‘sickened’ by the president’s son’s Twitter activity.
Hogg, 17, has been relentless in his calls for tighter gun laws since the shooting killed 14 of his classmates and three of his teachers
Donald Jr. is an avid hunter who regularly shares photographs of his collection of guns on social media
Donald Jr. is of the view that tighter gun laws would not prevent gun deaths. He has liked several tweets which suggest as much but is yet to share his opinion in his own words
‘I just think it’s a testament to the sick immaturity and broken state of our government when these people feel the need to pedal conspiracy theories about people that were in a school shooting where 17 people died and it just makes me sick.
While he has not tweeted himself about the atrocity, Donald Jr. has been busy supporting others who do not share Hogg’s view of his father’s policies. Above, a tweet he liked on Monday which says ‘no one cares’ about how many male suicides per gun there
‘It’s immature, rude, and inhuman for these people to destroy the people trying to prevent the death of the future of America because they won’t,’ he told BuzzFeed.
Over the weekend, Donald Jr. is said to have had multiple, lengthy conversations with his father at Mar-a-Lago about the issue of gun reform.
Sources cited by The Daily Beast said the pair spoke often while televisions were in front of them playing the interviews of survivors like Hogg.
In a tweet which outraged shooting survivors on Saturday, Trump appeared to blame the FBI for the mass murder
Donald Jr. implored his father to maintain his position on the issue and to focus instead on mental health checks, it was claimed.
Donald Jr. is in India on business.
Since the Parkland shooting, his own tweets have been limited to the FBI’s investigation into Russian meddling but he has liked several others about gun control.
All suggest that a change in the law would not have prevented the massacre and focus instead on monitoring gun owners’ mental health.
President Trump has said he is working on ‘many fronts’ with Congress in wake of the shooting but he is yet to promise any reform on the law on owning or purchasing guns.
Conservative critics suggested David could not be trusted because his father Kevin (above with him, his mother Rebecca and his younger sister) was a retired FBI agent
The family moved to Florida in 2014 from California. David proudly said last week that his father and other FBI agents were among the hardest working people he knew and they should not be blamed for the shooting despite the bureau being warned numerous times about Cruz
He appeared to blame the FBI for the shooting last week in a tweet which outraged other survivors.
Among them was Hogg who asked why he and other politicians relied on the NRA’s donations.
‘If you can’t get elected without taking money from child murderers, why are you running?’ he told CNN.
He added that his father and other former FBI agents were among the ‘hardest working people in the world’.
Neither Kevin nor David’s mother Rebecca has spoken out on the issue since their son stormed the nation’s media last week.
The family moved to Florida from California in 2014.
David’s mother Rebecca advocates for Planned Parenthood on social media.
She also appears to be a fan of CNN, on which he has appeared numerous times this past week and which the Trumps notoriously dislike.
The family are avid CNN fans and visited the network’s headquarters in 2016. David’s mother is pictured posing with a cardboard cutout of Anderson Cooper (left). David, who is involved with his student news network and is a budding young journalist, right, is pictured behind the anchor’s desk
Hogg returned to the school campus the day after the shooting to speak to the gathered media and make impassioned pleas for tighter gun laws. He is pictured above with Kelsey Friend who watched teacher Scott Beigel die in front of her