#WrongTrump and the Left’s False Claim of Moral Superiority

Following Robert Trump’s death, the hashtag #WrongTrump trended on Twitter. “Bishop” Talbert Swan – who is president of the Springfield, Massachusetts branch of the NAACP tweeted “Dear Grim Reaper, You took the #wrongtrump,” while journalist David Leavitt tweeted “What did he promise the devil for the Grim Reaper to take the #wrong trump???”

It’s important to carefully distinguish between general Twitter and mainstream Twitter. General Twitter is a garbage heap of attention-seeking hot-takes and depraved idiocy. Mainstream Twitter is supposed to provide us with an immediate insight into the minds of those in the political mainstream. What is shocking about #WrongTrump is not that it was used, but that it was spread by those who claim to occupy the serious and mainstream section of the Twitter-verse.

When we make this distinction, it becomes damningly clear that this style of mainstream celebration is unique to the Left. The appalling reaction to Robert Trump’s passing was not the first time a person’s physical downfall was celebrated as a political victory. When David Koch – the American businessman, philanthropist, political activist, and chemical engineer – died on August 23rd 2019, applause erupted from the Left. Bill Maher even hoped that David Koch suffered. When Hermain Cain – the American business executive, writer, and Tea Party activist – died last July from COVID-19, his death was leveraged as a political attack on both his views of COVID-19 and the Republican Party generally. Ben Shapiro described this perverse attitude aptly: “This is the rationale for many on the left…because obviously if somebody whose politics you don’t like dies of COVID, then you get to dunk on them … that’s basically the way our garbage world works.”