Not content with insulting Mexicans, spreading false rumours about Muslims and offending women, U.S. presidential hopeful, businessman and reality TV star Donald Trump has now been accused of committing another faux pas.
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His name is Serge Kovaleski, an award-winning investigative reporter, now with The New York Times, who happens to have been born with deformities in his hands and lower arms.
In a campaign stop in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, Trump laid into the journalist, doing an impression that saw him flail his arms while putting on a odd voice. “He’s going like, I don’t remember”.
The New York NY Times, where Kovaleski is presently a reporter, additionally had a response to the incident: “We think it’s outrageous in that he would ridicule the appearance of one of our reporters”, a Times spokeswoman told Politico & confirmed to Business Insider.
Trump knows Kovaleski and is aware of his physical appearance from the years when Kovaleski worked at the New York Daily News and frequently covered Trump.
But instead of responding with an apology in the way that a sane and compassionate human would, Trump took to Twitter to bash the Times, arguably the most respected publication in the country, if not the world.
Mr Trump cited a 2001 article by Mr Kovaleski, who was working for The Washington Post at the time, which said that authorities had detained a number of people who were allegedly seen celebrating the 9/11 attacks and “holding tailgate-style parties on rooftops while they watched the devastation on the other side of the river”.
He now says he does “not recall anyone saying there were thousands, or even hundreds, of people celebrating”.
That was the comment Trump was mocking in his speech. The report, Trump stated, was “written by a pleasant reporter. That was not the case, as best as I can remember”, Kovaleski told the Post.
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“It is unacceptable for a child to mock another child’s disability on the playground, never mind a presidential candidate mocking someone’s disability as part of a national political discourse”, said Jay Ruderman, the foundation’s president.
