Reprinted with permission from MediaMatters.
Setting the record for a new low, Gateway Pundit’s White House correspondent Lucian Wintrich grossly smeared survivors of the high school shooting in Parkland, FL, for being vocal about the need for gun regulation.
In the days after the attack, Wintrich took to Twitter and posted attacks that mirrored those of far-right trolls on online message boards, claiming that the surviving students were “milking the deaths of their peers for careers,” that they “don’t care about those lives lost,” that they “are not fully learned and are far from it,” and that they’re “completely entitled” “little pricks.” In his tweets, Wintrich also referenced a conspiracy theory he had pushed earlier to attack student David Hogg, asserting he had “been coached on anti-Trump lines.” Following the shooting, Hogg has consistently raised his voice to demand that policymakers take action about gun control legislation. Hogg’s remarks have made him a target of smears from far-right trolls and pro-Trump media, smears that the president’s son Donald Trump Jr. has appeared to encourage.
Wintrich has demonstrated a penchant for manipulating facts after mass shootings in efforts to politically exploit tragedies. He did so in October 2017, after a shooter fatally shot 59 concert-goers in Las Vegas, NV, when he defended The Gateway Pundit for publishing a piece accusing the wrong shooter and claiming the shooter could’ve been radicalized by Islam. He did the same thing again shortly after the shooting at the Parkland high school by falsely reporting that the shooter Nikolas Cruz was Hispanic and a registered Democrat. The Gateway Pundit was forced to update Wintrich’s original report:
