A Fox News contributor Friday received a stern warning from an influential Republican commentator who said his attack on a neurodivergent teenager's family should be retracted or used against him.
Fox News contributor Joe Concha expressed disdain — in a since-deleted tweet — that Gov. Tim Walz tugged his neurodivergent son Gus' hand as they mounted the stage of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago this week.
"I'd never tug my kid's hand like that," Concha wrote, "especially in front of 25 million people."
Gus Walz, 17, has been diagnosed with a nonverbal learning disability that can affect his spatial-visual skills, reports show. The video Concha shared shows Walz directing his son away from a teleprompter.
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In targeting the teen's appearance at the convention, Concha joins the ranks of conservative commentators Ann Coulter and Jay Weber, both of whom mocked Gus Walz' emotional response to his father's DNC acceptance speech and faced immediate backlash.
On Friday, Erick Erickson, a conservative talk show host and former Georgia politician, declared publicly he'd had enough with the attacks in general and with Concha in particular.
"Dammit people, the kid has mental disabilities," wrote Erickson. "Drop this issue or deserve to have it used against you."
Ron Fournier, the former Washington bureau chief for the Associated Press, praised Erickson for speaking out against targeted attacks on the Walz' family dynamic.
"While I rarely agree with you politically, you don’t hesitate to draw a line on the right side of decency and humanity," Fournier replied. "We should all have that in common."
Corie Whalen, media relations director at the D.C. think tank R Street Institute, argued Concha's attack came in direct opposition with the common moniker for his professed anti-abortion stance.
"I refuse to believe that anyone who would bully a special needs teenager is actually pro-life," Whalen wrote. "These are sick people who need to sit down and think about why they’ve allowed themselves to become so filled with hate, particularly toward those least deserving of it."
