Renee Baio, the wife of celebrity Trump supporter Scott Baio, is receiving massive criticism for an insult she tweeted at the parent of one of the children slain during the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.
Specifically, she tweeted at Nelba Marquez-Greene—the mother of Ana Grace Marquez-Green, who was killed in the 2012 mass shooting. The 44-year-old suggested that the young girl was better off dead than living with her mother, insisting the elder Marquez-Greene’s “ugliness knows no bounds.”
Shame on @reneebaio for her cruel & heartless tweets to Sandy Hook mother @Nelba_MG. pic.twitter.com/0SS7DtfrQS
— Newtown Action Alliance (@NewtownAction) August 27, 2017
It all started when her actor husband Scott Baio retweeted a conspiracy theory suggesting that the killing of 32-year-old anti-racist demonstrator Heather Heyer in Charlottesville,Virginia earlier this month was a false flag operation―that it wasn’t real, in other words.
The image he retweeted specifically compared the appearance of Susan Bro, Heyer’s mother who spoke at her memorial, to that of former Sandy Hook teacher Vicki Soto, who died in the shooting. The implication is that the two women are the same person, advancing the popular (although entirely discredited) conspiracy theory that the Sandy Hook shooting was a staged event that made use of crisis actors.
Trump surrogate and frequent Fox News guest @ScottBaio is retweeting Sandy Hook truther memes pic.twitter.com/kukem5nRvn
— Benjamin Landy (@Ben_Landy) August 24, 2017
After Marquez-Greene tweeted a critical response at Renee Baio over her husband’s conspiracy-stoking retweet, she fired back with the following reply: “I’m sorry for your loss, however maybe your children are in a better place. Your ugliness knows no bounds! I’ll pray for you.”
Scott Baio, for his part, has since tweeted that he regrets having initially signal-boosted the Sandy Hook truther theory, although he also criticized “libs” in the process.
,@Lololeeta I did NOT post. I retweeted. That's what's wrong with libs. They assume, spin, bend and lie.
— Scott Baio (@ScottBaio) August 25, 2017
In retrospect, I wish I had thought longer about retweeting that conspiracy photo. I shouldn't have sent it. It was wrong. #Baio
— Scott Baio (@ScottBaio) August 25, 2017
Given the high-profile and incendiary nature of the tweet, plenty of people are denouncing Renee Baio in moral terms, calling her to account for suggesting, basically, that Marquez-Greene’s child was better off having been killed.
https://twitter.com/AbbySMaslin/status/901514744271699969
Renee Baio has locked her Twitter account in response to the criticism, and she has not publicly commented since.