Butthurt About Bed Bugs

A made up Radical Left Story about Doral bedbugs, but Bret Stephens is loaded up with them! Been calling me wrong for years, along with the few remaining Never Trumpers - All Losers! https://t.co/KlzzMC40Vt

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 28, 2019

Somehow or other, two weird national stories involving bedbugs got publicized recently. For the Doral story, Trump made the ethically questionable suggestion that his Doral property would be ideal to host the next G-7 meeting (or, if he has it his way, G-8), which reminded people (for the internet never forgets) that Trump Doral is famous for scenic views, golfing, and bed bugs. The story is definitely not made up--the Trump Org settled when sued over a very nasty case of bug bites. (And why not bed bugs? They had rats and roaches as well!) Because Trump despises negative publicity, he is fighting back as he does best: by repeating it on the internet so everyone can send around their best "Trump Resorts so nasty" links!

You can not buy that kind of publicity, you just can't.

The Bret Stephens story came about because the New York Times building also has a case of the crawlies, and a Twitter wag joked that it was a metaphor for the contentious columnist, in a Tweet that had all of nine likes and no re-tweets. And Stephens emailed the Tweeter and cc'd the provost at his university, and like, a handful of other people, apparently. Which is overkill, and definitely does not sound like he did not want someone disciplined for, um, hurting his feelings, I guess? Then he went on tv to say that the rhetoric of being compared to a bedbug was dehumanizing so even more people would know about the kerfuffle (and sometimes being compared to vermin is dehumanizing--but then again, everyone has heard the term "crazy as a bed bug" so I don't know that we can put these things on the same level at all because people know the difference between, say, the eliminationist rantings of a demogogue who might compare people from a certain area, like, I dunno, the Middle East, to a disease, and joking people on Twitter).

And since there are two sides to any controversy, the joker in question, David Karpf has been having some interviews and I know at least on Twitter and in blog comments, people have been having a fun time recalling that Stephens is an awful columnist. (It's been an ongoing issue for some time.) Anyway, it's a super terrible look for someone who regularly concern-trolls about freedom of speech and political correctness.

Bed bugs, huh? They sure do bite.