The younger sister of teenage gun control advocate David Hogg called out the First Lady’s silence on the relentless cyberbullying that the Parkland survivors are now facing — a campaign supported on Twitter by Donald Trump Jr.
Lauren Hogg, who was in Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School with her brother last week when a gunman killed 17 people, took to Twitter on Friday to call out Melania Trump’s silence on the cyberbullying she and other survivors are being forced to endure. One major accusation is that the students now advocating for gun control are in fact “crisis actors” — an accusation Trump Jr. supported with several Twitter likes.
“He liked a post about a false conspiracy theory which in turn put a target on my back,” Hogg tweeted. “I’m 14, I should never have had to deal with any of this and even though I thought it couldn’t get any worse it has because of your family.”
&created a safe space for people all over the world to call me and my family horrific things that constantly re-victimizes us and our community. I’m 14 I should never have had to deal with any of this and even though I thought it couldn’t get worse it has because of your family.
— Lauren Hogg (@lauren_hoggs) February 23, 2018
When Donald Trump was campaigning back in 2016, Melania announced that one of her focuses would be to combat cyberbullying. “We must find better ways to honor and support the basic goodness of our children, especially in social media,” she said to a crowd in Pennsylvania. “It will be one of the main focuses of my work if I’m privileged enough to become your First Lady.”
This week would seem to present the perfect opportunity for the First Lady to revive her fledgling anti-bullying campaign. As the students of Marjory Douglas Stoneman High serious action on gun control after the mass shooting at their school, they have been subject to cruel and relentless trolling. Death threats have forced some students to abandon Facebook, while others have been accused of being “crisis actors,” propagating anti-gun propaganda.
But the First Lady has been completely silent. Meanwhile, her stepson, Trump Jr., liked a story which appeared on the Gateway Pundit suggesting that David Hogg is “running cover” for the FBI and that his anti-gun advocacy is part of an FBI plot “only looking to curb YOUR Constitutional rights and INCREASE their power.” Trump Jr. also liked a post featuring a re-tweet of Jack Posobiec, a “citizen investigator” perhaps most notorious for pushing the Pizzagate conspiracy theory that there’s a child sex dungeon under Comet Pizza restaurant in Washington, D.C.
Earlier in the week, shooting survivor Cameron Kasky said he’d decided to quit Facebook because “there’s not character count so the death threats from the NRA cultists are a bit more graphic than those on Twitter.” The Hogg family has also been receiving threats, with David’s mother, Rebecca Boldrick, telling The Washington Post it was near overwhelming.
“I’m under so much stress,” she said. “I’m angry and exhausted. Angry, exhausted and proud.”