Gateway Pundit’s Lucian Wintrich Tweets Meme of Trump As 9/11 Plane Crashing Into Twin Towers
Why’d you take this down? pic.twitter.com/ftE21CGbDy
— Irving Muller (@irvingmuller) July 7, 2017
Lucian B. Wintrich, White House reporter for the bizarre and often inaccurate Gateway Pundit blog, tweeted out a curious meme depicting President Donald Trump as one of the hijacked planes flying into the World Trade Center, shown with the CNN logo.
Wintrich, who gained prominence in right wing circles after organizing the “Twinks for Trump” art show — which featured Milo Yiannopoulos bathing in pig’s blood — reveled in Trump’s tweet of the CNN-bodyslam video — a nod to the meme-inclined circles of the pro-Trump internet that he inhabits.
But the young White House reporter apparently got a little carried away Wednesday, tweeting out a meme depicting Trump as one of the planes flying into the World Trade Center, a terror attack that took the lives of nearly 3,000 people. The tweet was swiftly deleted by Wintrich following a backlash — but not before it was screenshotted by a number of hawk-eyed Twitter users.
As Newsweek points out, Wintrich defended his posting of the tweet in response to criticism, apparently attempting to lay the blame for the meme on his “friend in the Marines”:
Yes, sent to me by my friend in the Marines -and I stand by it being funny. Taken down due to requests.
— Lucian B. Wintrich (@lucianwintrich) July 6, 2017
I didn’t create it – which was my point. And I could care less if folks didnt like it
— Lucian B. Wintrich (@lucianwintrich) July 6, 2017
Much to the dismay of the more traditionalist members of the White House press corps, Wintrich has attended a number of press briefings on behalf of Gateway Pundit, a blog created by Jim Hoft, widely known as the “dumbest man on the internet.” Wintrich also headlined last month’s “Rally Against Political Violence,” held by far-right social media stars in response to what they perceive as increasing violence incited by the left.
UPDATE 3:24 P.M.: Wintrich responded to Mediaite’s request for comment, explaining why he deleted the tweet: “I enjoy macabre humor, sometimes jokes don’t ‘land’. But if we didn’t experiment with limits and bounds then life (and humor) wouldn’t be very interesting.”
[image via screengrab]
