Conservatives attack credibility of students who survived the school shooting in Florida. Seriously? Update!

As of this morning, the teenaged Florida mass-shooting survivors have variously been criticized as:
-Soros plants
-The biased children of FBI agents
-Too traumatized to have worthwhile opinions about an event that directly involved them https://t.co/YbZmsBGsuL

— Matt Pearce 🦅 (@mattdpearce) February 20, 2018

Courtesy of Think Progress:

David Hogg, a senior at the school, was one of the first to appear on national television and demand action. “We’re children. You guys are the adults. You need to take some action and play a role. Work together. Come over your politics and get something done,” Hogg said, looking directly into the camera. 

Hogg is now being targeted by Gateway Pundit, a far-right blog that has press credentials from the Trump White House. A post published on Monday by the site’s White House correspondent, Lucian Wintrich, features Hogg’s photo with the word “EXPOSED” stamped in red.

Wintrich says Hogg and other students throw up some “red flags.” The first “red flag” is that Hogg’s father is a retired FBI agent. (Hogg freely admitted this on national television.) The insinuation is that Hogg’s father, who does not even work for the FBI, has tasked his son with talking about gun control to take the heat off the agency. 

Wintrich also uses an edited YouTube video of Hogg having some difficulty answering questions for a taped interview as evidence that Hogg is “heavily coached on lines and is merely reciting a script.” There is no evidence, in the video or elsewhere in the article, supporting this claim. 

Wintrich then drops all pretenses and fully embraces the conspiracy: 

Why would the child of an FBI agent be used as a pawn for anti-Trump rhetoric and anti-gun legislation? Because the FBI is only looking to curb YOUR Constitutional rights and INCREASE their power. We’ve seen similar moves by them many times over. This is just another disgusting example of it.

Is anybody else having a Sandy Hook deja vu?

Some version of this conspiracy theory has now spread across social media.

Pro-Trump media really reaching for attacks on Fla. shooting survivor David Hogg. The latest: True Pundit says Hogg going on a tour of CNN HQ, apparently years ago, is proof that he's up to something. pic.twitter.com/rMi114quJf

— Will Sommer (@willsommer) February 20, 2018

It has even been embraced by Donald Trump Jr.:

Don Jr. has liked at least two tweets pushing content that attempts to discredit one of the most vocal student survivors of the Parkland school shooting. pic.twitter.com/YI9ANh5dlL

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) February 20, 2018

And Hogg is not their only target.

Writer for Jim Hoft's The Gateway Pundit now saying student survivors of the Parkland school shooting are "are milking the deaths of their peers for careers" and "only care about their SJW agenda" pic.twitter.com/YAIgguU8tO

— Timothy Johnson (@timothywjohnson) February 20, 2018

Trust me when I say that I have seen the conservatives go low before, but to attack these kids, or suggest that they are "milking the deaths of their peers for careers," is so incredibly disgusting that it literally makes me sick to my stomach.

I understand the fear that the Right is feeling right now, if I saw these kids coming after me and my party I might be wetting my tighty whiteys as well, but all that attacking them accomplishes is to make them even more determined and erase ANY hope of convincing them that the conservatives and Republican party are not their enemies.

To use perhaps too apt of a metaphor the conservatives are essentially shooting themselves in the foot right now.

And while all this is going on a critically clueless conservative journalist is suggesting that the gun control debate needs to wait until people start showing respect to gun owners:

So if you want to stop school shootings it’s not enough just to vent and march. It’s necessary to let people from Red America lead the way, and to show respect to gun owners at all points. There has to be trust and respect first. Then we can strike a compromise on guns as guns, and not some sacred cross in the culture war. 

You know I have heard of "tone deaf" before, but this David Brooks guy is just "deaf deaf."

(Buzzfeed by the way has a rather expansive article on the student's grass roots activism, that essentially drives a stake through the heart of the whole "manipulated by the Left Wing" narrative.)

Update: People are starting to lose their jobs over these smear campaigns.

JUST IN: Aide to Florida GOP lawmaker fired for spreading false claim that shooting survivors are "actors" https://t.co/uY4WGB7IQX pic.twitter.com/revhfMj8aN

— The Hill (@thehill) February 21, 2018

Nice to see a little justice served.