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.

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.

  • TransplantedSconie
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    26 days ago

    You’re telling me the gutter of humanity couldn’t lift themselves out of the slime of division, hate, and bigotry to see a son who loves his father vibing and letting the love go in a great moment of high emotions?

    Color me shocked. Fucking weirdos.

      • Cypher@lemmy.world
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        26 days ago

        No, they don’t understand sons loving their fathers.

        They’re weirdly into daughters loving their fathers though.

        • kautau@lemmy.world
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          25 days ago

          Yeah they would have loved if it was an attractive 15 year old girl instead, probably would have invited her on a jet to a private island…

      • TheFriar
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        25 days ago

        Ann coulter literally said “talk about weird.”

        “That kid really loves his dad. Is no one else seeing this?! What a strange relationship.”

        The conservative mindset in a nutshell.

    • Hazzia@infosec.pub
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      25 days ago

      I like how the one lady tried to flip the “weird” label onto it and failed so spectacularly she had to delete it because it turns out normal people don’t think it’s weird for guys to cry or to love your parents.

    • blazeknave@lemmy.world
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      25 days ago

      Yeah, how is this a headline? Bullies continue to bully. These are not swing voters, I don’t want to think about them anymore. I hate how much of Kamala’s speech I spent veering from sobbing joy to wondering how the right is going to snippet the moment.

      That fucking boy, the reflection on that loving father and mother, instilled in me once again, a feeling that society is progressing, the way I felt from 07 to 16. He cracked the broken frozen part of my heart right open.

      I want this fucking maga Nazi bullshit to go away so we can get back on track to loving one another more openly and inventing cool future shit to stop climate change. Not giving my taxes to babies who want to play with my infrastructure like it’s their toys.

    • Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works
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      25 days ago

      There are honestly few things in this world more weird than the idea of mocking pure expressions of love.

      These people have lost their humanity, and are drowning in their own “alpha culture” cruelty. To make things even more weird, the “alpha” they follow is an amoral, senile man with a low IQ and a propensity to wear diapers in public.