There aren’t many inviolable rules of politics but one that I admire is the one that says: Leave the freaking kids out of it! It’s fair game to after the president and his wife for whatever reason, it’s not okay to start writing mean girl stories about Barron Trump who is just a kid. The same goes for President Obama’s daughters and really all kids whose parents work in politics unless and until they voluntarily enter the political world as adults.

So the other day the Daily Mail posted a clickbait piece featuring a picture of Malia Obama holding a bottle of wine. The hook for the story was that Malia is only 20 and therefore not of legal drinking age. I’m not going to link the story because it’s garbage. But pretty quickly you had people on the left banging out tweets blaming the right for allegedly “frothing at the mouth” over this big Malia Obama scoop. This tweet has 40k likes:

Conservatives are frothing at the mouth over Malia Obama drinking rosé at a party just shy of her 21st birthday. These are the same people who had no problem giving Justice Brett Kegstand a lifetime appointment to SCOTUS. — Imani Gandy (@AngryBlackLady) February 19, 2019

This one making the same point at almost the same exact time has 62k likes:

The same people mad at Malia Obama for drinking wine and wearing a bathing suit at age 20 are the same people who excuse Brett Kavanaugh for drinking beer and assaulting a woman at age 17 — Zack Bornstein (@ZackBornstein) February 19, 2019

And here’s one with 48k likes:

Conservatives: Brett Kavanaugh was just a young boy when he drank too much beer and tried to rape girls in college. Also conservatives: Malia Obama drinking wine at 20 years old is unacceptable! — Denizcan Grimes (@MrFilmkritik) February 18, 2019

Tens of thousands of people on the left are angry and ready to crush these right-wing hypocrites. Bring on the evil right-wingers so we can drag them! Okay, here they come:

Everyone on my Twitter feed seems to agree that this Malia Obama thing is not news and doesn't matter and we should just leave her alone. Seems like this another fake "conservatives are outraged about a dumb thing" story that the media has cooked up. — Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) February 19, 2019

Seriously who gives a shit what Malia Obama puts on her Facebook page. — Emily Zanotti (@emzanotti) February 18, 2019

Wait, that’s not right. Let me find the real villains:

OMG Malia Obama is a human with political opinions and also enjoys wine. — Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) February 18, 2019

The problem with Malia Obama is not that she’s having some wine at 20, it’s that she has narc friends who leak things about her life. Keep a small circle. — Jesse Kelly (@JesseKellyDC) February 19, 2019

My timeline is 99% people saying the Malia Obama stuff is not news and shouldn’t be in the news. By tomorrow, places like Raw Story and ThinkProgress will have articles saying that conservatives attacked her. — RBe (@RBPundit) February 18, 2019

On behalf of the conservative delegation, I’d like to formally say WE DON’T CARE MALIA OBAMA DRANK WINE https://t.co/ctKsJ5MYkX — Cabot Phillips (@cabot_phillips) February 19, 2019

Malia Obama is trending because of all the conservatives saying "Who gives a shit" and it will be used to claim conservatives give a shit — Currently between fraudulent suspensions (@jtLOL) February 19, 2019

You will be shocked to learn that both of these lines are not accurate representations of what most conservatives said…. In fact, every conservative that I have seen commenting on the Malia Obama thing has said it's a non-story. https://t.co/HhFWrsgW6C — (((AG))) (@AG_Conservative) February 19, 2019

Why is everyone hyperventilating about the actions of Malia Obama – a child that is not theirs? Let's leave the snowflakery to the other side. — CJ Pearson (@thecjpearson) February 18, 2019

I’m reaching here:

https://twitter.com/Cernovich/status/1097945429252030465

The notion that conservatives are at all bothered by Malia Obama having opinions or drinking wine is another fake narrative, just like the claim anyone was bothered by AOC dancing. Apart from a handful of incels on Twitter, no one cared. — Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) February 19, 2019

Watson makes a good comparison. It was only about a month ago that conservatives were supposedly outraged over a video of AOC dancing during her college days. In that case, the NY Times, Newsweek, and other outlets ran stories about the alleged outrage but failed to include any examples. It was a kind of phantom menace. Liberals were outraged over attacks that almost no one on the right was making.

The left is clearly eager to lash out at almost anyone the right whether they be Catholic high school kids or denizens of Chicago’s notorious MAGA country. In the case of the AOC dance video and this Malia Obama story, conservatives can even be saying the opposite pretty consistently all day long and still tens of thousands of people are getting themselves worked up over the idea of the offense, even if actual examples are few and far between. This story is evidence of an ongoing political problem, it’s just not the one the left thinks it is.