Trump Is Exploiting a Picture with a Parkland Survivor to Get Donations

It’s been 12 days since the Parkland school shooting, and yet again, Donald Trump has utterly embarrassed himself and anyone else with a shred of empathy. He spent last week stumping for the NRA on Twitter while The Teens led protests and took Trump and others on the NRA’s payroll down one incredible roast at a time. And now, Trump, a 1000-time Olympic champion in setting the bar infinitely lower, has managed to degrade himself even further, attempting to turn the Parkland shooting into a fundraising opportunity for his reelection campaign.

On Saturday, the Trump Make America Great Again Committee sent out an email featuring an image of Trump and his wife Melania visiting 17-year-old Parkland survivor Madeleine Wilford in the hospital. Why the campaign didn’t go with an image of 18-year-old survivor Samantha Fuentes—who was shot in both legs and left with shrapnel behind her right eye, and said after her phone call with Trump that she had “never been so unimpressed by a person in my life”—is surely a mystery.

The email read, via CNN:

“The nation has turned its attention to the senseless school shooting in Parkland, Florida…Trump is taking steps toward banning gun bump stocks and strengthening background checks for gun purchasers…The President has made his intent very clear: ‘making our schools and our children safer will be our top priority.’”

Actually, Trump has decidedly not taken any real action aside from talking about arming teachers, and as Mother Jones points out, he slashed millions from background check funds in his current proposed budget.

The email then includes a link to donate money to Trump’s campaign or, of course, head to the official Trump shop to buy MAGA merch.