A woman with a nephew fighting cancer became the latest target of irrational hate on the left for thanking a donor to St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital of Tennessee.
The donor was Eric Trump, son of President Donald Trump. This story should give us all pause about the limits of anger over politics.
Last month a Tennessee radio host thanked Eric Trump and St. Jude for their help in nephew’s cancer fight along with their continuing support as he deals with the after-effects of his treatment. Trump retweeted her tweet and it kicked off a round of criticism for this family that was personal and even questioned whether her nephew (Zach) was really sick. Yesterday, tweeted that her nephew was cancer free.
In what became a #WalkAway video, she explained that all she wanted to do was say thank you, but that opened her and her nephew up to social media vitriol:
“So I vow to say thank you to anybody who helps make that hospital run.
When Trump responded to her tweet, she said “the hate that has come out is unreal. Unreal.”
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“This whole thing that is going on with this… the [vitriol], the angry… the nastiness, just the hate that is surrounding the president and his family and just anybody who is affiliated with him at all is just… it’s just awful.
“Now you’re gonna attack a charity? You’re gonna attack a St. Jude family, someone who went through hell for four years. Come on now. So I’m seeing where they just have no boundaries. They don’t care. They have no conscience [whatsoever].”
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“I don’t understand how we have become so hateful in our society. I don’t get it and all I did was say thank you,” the woman added.
Eric Trump donated and raised $16.3 million for the children’s cancer-fighting organization as the New York Times reported last year.
Many St. Jude families thanked him for his support and shared their stories of how this hospital helped their little ones fight cancer. Some of those stories didn’t have a happy ending, but at least for Zach it is a happy ending.
The silver lining in the story is that this harassment is drawing attention to the family's fundraising efforts as Zach plans to run to raise funds so that other kids like him can be helped.
Our nation is in a sad state when life-saving organizations and the families of sick children have to defend their gratitude for the financial help of donors simply because people hate their politics. The politics of donors should not matter.
This is another extension of the Trump resistance movement that has nothing to do with policy but feeds on disdain for anyone connected to President Trump.
We’ve seen that the latest tactic of the left is to harass Trump officials from booing them out of restaurants to kicking them out of dining establishments because of their politics. Congresswoman Maxine Waters is even inciting crowds to target those in the administration whether they are eating, pumping gas, or buying groceries.
That is exactly what we don’t need right now.
Everyone from lawmakers to citizens must allow humanity to trump politics. The left should especially be wary of promoting these tactics that are turning off Americans leading them to #WakAway and at worst could lead to harmful – even deadly – impacts.