Trump Mocks Greta Thunberg on Twitter, and She Jabs Back

Early Thursday, the answer arrived.

“So ridiculous,” Trump tweeted. “Greta must work on her anger management problem, then go to a good old fashioned movie with a friend! Chill Greta, Chill!”

Thunberg was quick to respond.

“A teenager working on her anger management problem,” read a new version of her Twitter biography. “Currently chilling and watching a good old fashioned movie with a friend.”

People on Twitter quickly weighed in on Trump’s remarks.

“Nothing like going after a young girl with Asperger Syndrome to drive home the point that you are fit for office,” Holly Figueroa O’Reilly, an op-ed writer for The Washington Post and The Guardian, said on Twitter. (Thunberg has Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism, and has called it “a superpower.”)

Others on Twitter zeroed in on Melania Trump’s tweet from earlier this month in which she said a minor child deserves privacy and should be kept out of politics after her son, Barron Trump, was mentioned in the impeachment hearings by Pamela S. Karlan, a Stanford law professor.

“Did you tell your horrible husband to leave @GretaThunberg alone?” actress Yvette Nicole Brown asked the first lady on Twitter. “Maybe he’ll listen to you,” she added, using the trending hashtag “BeBest,” a nod to Melania Trump’s child-focused platform dedicated to kindness and well-being.

Thursday’s exchange was not the first tangle between Trump, whose administration has attacked climate science and rolled back environmental regulations, and Thunberg, who was in Madrid for the United Nations climate conference this week.

After she delivered a pointed speech at the U.N. in September, the young activist became a lightning rod for criticism. Trump tweeted a clip of her speech with the seemingly sarcastic message: “She seems like a very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future. So nice to see!”

That time, Thunberg also changed her Twitter biography, describing herself as “a very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future.”

She has also faced attacks from others on the right. Fox News apologized in September after a pundit called Thunberg “a mentally ill Swedish child” on one of its programs.

Trump wasn’t the only person to criticize Time’s 2019 selection.

“No matter your political leaning, whether you love her or hate her, whether you’re for Trump or against him,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi “has had a much bigger impact,” Jake Sherman, a senior writer at Politico, said on Twitter on Wednesday.

Thunberg was selected over Pelosi, Trump, the Ukraine whistleblower and the Hong Kong protesters, who won Time’s 2019 person of the year in a reader poll that had more than 27 million votes.

Thunberg told The Associated Press she was “surprised” to learn she had been selected as Time’s person of the year, but said the accolade should be shared.

“It should be everyone in the Fridays for Future movement because what we have done, we have done together,” she said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .