Trump again targets activist Thunberg
Two things have long obsessed President Donald Trump: Time’s person of the year and the 16-yearold climate activist Greta Thunberg.
This week, they collided when Time picked her for its annual cover.
“So ridiculous,” Trump tweeted. “Greta must work on her anger management problem, then go to a good old fashioned movie with a friend! Chill Greta, Chill!”
Thunberg was quick to respond.
“A teenager working on her anger management problem,” read a new version of her Twitter biography. “Currently chilling and watching a good old fashioned movie with a friend.”
People on Twitter quickly weighed in on Trump’s remarks.
“Nothing like going after a young girl with Asperger Syndrome to drive home the point that you are fit for office,” Holly Figueroa O’Reilly, an op-ed writer for the Washington Post and the Guardian, said on
Twitter. Thunberg has Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism, and has called it “a superpower.”
Others on Twitter zeroed in on first lady Melania Trump’s tweet from earlier this month in which she said a minor child deserves privacy and should be kept out of politics after her son, Barron Trump, was mentioned in the impeachment hearings.
“Did you tell your horrible husband to leave @GretaThunberg alone?” actress Yvette Nicole Brown asked the first lady on Twitter. “Maybe he’ll listen to you,” she added, using the trending hashtag “BeBest,” a nod to Melania Trump’s child-focused platform dedicated to kindness and well-being.
Thursday’s exchange was not the first tangle between Trump, whose administration has attacked climate science and rolled back environmental regulations, and Thunberg.
After she delivered a pointed speech at the U.N. in September, the young activist became a lightning rod for criticism. Trump tweeted a clip of her speech with the seemingly sarcastic message: “She seems like a very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future. So nice to see!”
That time, Thunberg also changed her Twitter biography to mockingly parrot Trump’s words.
She has also faced attacks from others on the right. Fox News apologized in September after a pundit called Thunberg “a mentally ill Swedish child” on one of its programs.
Thunberg was selected over House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Trump, the Ukraine whistleblower and the Hong Kong protesters, who won Time’s 2019 person of the year in a reader poll that had more than 27 million votes.