Almost four years after the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School, many of the victims and their families are still healing from that horror. Well, the daughter of the school’s late principal feels that Donald Trump picked a scar off her wound by calling one of the nation’s most notorious Sandy Hook truthers after his upset win.
Erica Lafferty, the youngest daughter of Sandy Hook principal Dawn Hochsprung, was struck dumb when she heard conspiracy theorist Alex Jones boast that Trump personally called him to thank Jones’ supporters for helping him to victory. He even promised to drop by his show, “Infowars,” very soon. Jones, for those who don’t know, is one of the more notorious Sandy Hook truthers. For years, Jones has claimed that no one really died that day, and that “crisis actors” were planted there in order to gin up support for gun control. He’s made similar claims about a number of other mass shootings as well.
To give you an example of the kind of garbage he’s put out about Sandy Hook, watch this report from 2015 claiming that the shooting was cooked up by the Department of Homeland Security.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWsbyH2Wa0E
You can probably imagine that sort of talk gets on Lafferty’s last nerve. So you can understand her shock when she learned the president-elect was not only a very close friend of a raving conspiracy theorist and Sandy Hook truther, but had actually called to thank him.
Lafferty isn’t taking this lying down. She took to her blog at Medium to write a moving open letter to Trump demanding that he disavow Jones and anyone else who trolls in Sandy Hook trutherism.
As many of you know, Hochsprung was in the middle of a faculty meeting when she heard three popping sounds in the hallway. She ran out to investigate, along with her vice principal and the school psychologist. They ran into Adam Lanza, who was armed with an AR-15 style assault rifle. He opened fire–but not before Hochsprung and her two colleagues yelled “Shooter! Stay put!”
Hochsprung lunged at Lanza, taking his volley full on. She was one of the first of the 26 people killed at the school that day. It would have almost certainly been more than that if not for Hochsprung’s warning and heroism, as well as the intercom being on for morning announcements. And yet, to hear Sandy Hook truthers on both sides of the spectrum talk, it was all a hoax. Indeed, some of them have claimed that Hochsprung and others are still alive.
Needless to say, Lafferty finds it “unthinkable” and “unacceptable” that Jones has been able to peddle such bilge for so long. She finds it equally unacceptable that Trump has gone out of his way to praise Jones and his “amazing” reputation, and vowed that he “won’t let him down.” She reminds Trump that if he is serious about being “a president for all of us,” he will not only rescind his promise to appear on Jones’ show, but condemn “the conspiracy theories that he spreads at the expense of gun violence survivors.”
Lafferty has joined many of the other Sandy Hook survivors on the front lines of the fight to close the loopholes in our gun laws. She spoke at the Democratic National Convention about the effort to end gun violence. Watch here.
As part of that effort even, she shared her letter with the folks at Everytown for Gun Safety, who wanted to give the rest of the nation a chance to join Lafferty’s demand that Trump disavow this pigweed. Sign here.
We already know that Trump has no problem giving succor to some of the worst people in the world. After all, he recently named alt-right guru Steve Bannon as his senior adviser, even though he’s so disreputable that he probably wouldn’t qualify for a security clearance without Trump in his corner. But at the very least, Trump’s response to Lafferty will say a lot about whether he has any standards at all.
(featured image courtesy Lafferty’s Facebook)
