Donald Trump Is Attacking Greta Thunberg on Twitter With Maximum Pettiness

As predicted, Donald Trump did not respond well to learning teen climate activist Greta Thunberg was named TIME Magazine’s Person of the Year. Between his longtime obsession with the title and his previous personal attacks on Thunberg, no one expected him to #BeBest and take the news gracefully, maybe even offer her a warm congratulations. Still, it’s always so strange to see the actual President act this petty in a public forum:

I can’t figure out what the worst part of this is. The bullying itself? The fact that his wife is still pushing her sham of an anti-bullying campaign? The faux outrage these same people expressed just last week over some minor wordplay regarding another child’s name?

Trump’s accusation of Thunberg having an “Anger Management problem” is not only totally condescending and dismissive of the very real climate crisis driving her to express that anger. It’s also yet another ignorant way to frame a young woman with Aspergers. Thunberg herself has called her Aspergers a “superpower” but her facial expressions and her lack of smiling have driven her critics to call her angry or unfriendly or even worse, “mentally ill” and “deranged.”

The last time Trump attacked Thunberg’s demeanor, sarcastically calling her “a very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future,” Thunberg trolled him back with incredible subtlety.

And now she’s done it again:

Perfect.

(image: BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)

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Vivian Kane

Vivian Kane (she/her) is the Senior News Editor at The Mary Sue, where she's been writing about politics and entertainment (and all the ways in which the two overlap) since the dark days of late 2016. Born in San Francisco and radicalized in Los Angeles, she now lives in Kansas City, Missouri, where she gets to put her MFA to use covering the local theatre scene. She is the co-owner of The Pitch, Kansas City’s alt news and culture magazine, alongside her husband, Brock Wilbur, with whom she also shares many cats.

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