After President Donald Trump announced his COVID-19 diagnosis, Merriam-Webster Dictionary reported a 30,000% increase in searches for the word “schadenfreude.”
The German word, which is often translated as “harm joy,” or “joy in someone else’s pain,” instantly became a subject of debate.
GQ and Newsweek, along with Stephen Colbert of “The Late Show,” wondered whether schadenfreude was a morally defensible response to the president’s diagnosis.
MSNBC host Rachel Maddow said absolutely not. Harvard professor Laurence Tribe went further, writing that this was no time for “cruelty, schadenfreude, or any other form of small-mindedness.”
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