I recently received an email from a group called ADA Watch urging me to sign a petition calling on Donald Trump to “apologise to the more than 3 million Americans who stutter and stop mocking people with disabilities.”
This was in reference to a New York Times report that President Trump mocked Joe Biden at a rally by stuttering, as the president sometimes does.
I signed the petition but didn’t think it would do any good. Trump seems hopeless when it comes to saying or doing stupid things. Of all the stupid things Trump said or did during his first presidential campaign, polls have revealed that the stupid thing voters found most unforgivable was when he panicked and mocked a disabled journalist.
And now Trump has done it again. I’m not surprised at all. After all, this is a guy who said in the launch of his 2016 presidential campaign that “Mexico isn’t sending us its best people. They’re sending us people with a lot of problems, and they bring those problems with them. They bring drugs. They bring crime. They bring rapists. And maybe some good people in there.”
I find this statement far more stupid, ignorant, horrible and inexcusable than any of his other statements mocking disability, and how can we expect someone who is so quick to incite such nasty racism and xenophobia with stupid and ignorant comments about Mexicans to be more sensible when talking about people with disabilities?
In a way, I’m glad that Trump resorts to vile attacks on us. That’s just how he is. Whenever he doesn’t know what to say about something or someone, he hurls insults that sound like they were made up by a 10-year-old.
If he didn’t despise disabled people, I would feel somewhat left out, because he despises everyone else. Why not us? Are we worthless? I feel there is a certain pride that comes with being the object of his despise. The more he insults you, the more you know he thinks you don’t stand for what he stands for. And that’s a damn nice thing to say about someone.
It’s probably a good thing (at least in some ways) that Trump is so publicly displaying his bottomless stupidity and ignorance when it comes to people with disabilities. He can’t even try to fool anyone by pretending he knows or cares at all about people with disabilities. It just shows how stupid and ignorant he is about so many things, and how stupid and ignorant he thinks his constituents are. He often does and says stupid and ignorant things that are an insult to everyone’s intelligence.