President Donald Trump's decision to share an AI video mocking the death of a man mauled by a tiger at a Yorkshire zoo has exposed a level of insensitivity that the world's media has become desensitised to, according to columnist Richard Madeley.
Writing for the Daily Express, Madeley described the video as "obscene" and said it revealed "a level of insensitivity and casual cruelty completely off the scale." The post, shared just two days after a mentally ill young man climbed into an enclosure and was killed by a male Siberian tiger, showed Trump replacing the victim, laughing and wrestling with the animal.
A Global Reaction of Disgust
Madeley, who was filming a prison documentary in Bolivia at the time, said the tiger video was the biggest topic of conversation among locals at his hotel's breakfast tables. "Bolivians were disgusted by it," he wrote, noting that the international reaction stood in stark contrast to the muted coverage in the UK and US press.
Upon returning last weekend, Madeley expected to find uproar over what he called Trump's "latest appalling calumny." Instead, he found the story had "flared only briefly before being dropped," with almost nothing about it in last Sunday's UK papers.
Media Desensitisation to Trump's Behaviour
Madeley argued that this lack of sustained coverage demonstrates how desensitised the world's media has become to Trump's "increasingly bizarre, deeply offensive behaviour." He noted that Trump's past boast about grabbing women "by the p***y" would have sunk any other presidential candidate, yet Trump seemed to thrive on it.
"Perhaps the sheer number of crass comments, indiscretions and blatant lies told since then have simply worn down our capacity for the outrage we ought to feel," he wrote, calling the tiger video "the most hideous thing Trump has done to date."
A Psychological Profile
Madeley suggested the video is "the kind of thing a socially retarded teenager would have cheerfully posted," and posited that this may be Trump's true psychological profile. "He's a retarded teenager," he concluded, adding that the president appears able to "get away with just about anything." The column ends with a link to further coverage of countries Russia has attacked or violated since the Ukraine war started.
