Gus Walz won over the internet wearing his heart on his sleeve at the DNC. But the bullying that followed is what kids experience every day, some say.

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.

  • @[email protected]
    -26•3 months ago

    Left or Right, anyone who can cry on cue to a speech they’ve likely rehearsed a hundred times in their head, isn’t worth paying attention to. Unpopular I know.

    For example, I adore John Stewart and agree with almost everything he does, except when he made that emotional impassioned tearful speech a few years back, never once mucking his lines.

    Its just a trust thing. Tears sway people, and if its in the moment and captured ad-hoc then I am likely moved, but if all lenses are on it and the speech sounds forced, I switch off.

    • @clothes
      8•3 months ago

      I don’t think I understand. Are you suggesting that it’s impossible to prepare a speech about something you care deeply about?

      Or are you saying that people only cry the first time they tell an emotional story?

      I’m sure there are people with those experiences, and maybe you’re one of them. If it helps, I can attest that there are “well rehearsed” stories that I’ve told dozens of times, and I still cry during each telling.

      • @[email protected]
        2•3 months ago

        A little bit of everything, I think.

        To me, if you care deeply about a topic, then you should be able to communicate that by merit of your expertise in it and not by how emotionally invested you are in it.

        Or to put it another way: if crying is literally part of the story, then maybe don’t tell the story when the cameras are rolling, unless of course the story was less about the speech and more about the emotion.

        Let’s just take emotions out of politics. It educates absolutely nobody, and the only people won to your side are won by the depth of your professed emotion and not by the validity of your words.

        • @clothes
          3•3 months ago

          Interesting, thanks for explaining. I agree with the aspiration but maybe not the practicality?

          In a perfect world elections would be about hard policy discussions, but in 2024 policy barely matters. Campaigns don’t even release real platforms any more. The first party to take the emotion out of politics would lose horribly, because so many voters respond to it.

          Personally, I also like when people acknowledge that policy discussions impact real people. I think there’s an important role for displayed genuine emotion in rational discussion.

          I also don’t think that what we’re discussing is relevant to Gus Walz. We have every reason to believe that was a genuine and beautiful apolitical moment.

          • @[email protected]
            2•3 months ago

            I agree, this is 2024 and the quickest way to win voters is appeals to emotion/nostalgia rather than punctuating a platform that no one will read. It’s a sad truth.

            The kid seems nice, and for what it’s worth I do believe it was genuine. I just wish neither side will wield it for their own political motivations.