Disgusting. Vile. Nauseating. Monstrous. Odious. Malignant. Evil.
No word fully encapsulates the psychopathic abomination that is Trump, nor is there any combination of them that conveys what I felt upon reading his horrid statement about the murders of Rob and Michele Reiner. Would that every American felt the same. Within the thirty trillion cells in his body, not one mitochondrion contains an atom of humanity. No strand of DNA is coded for empathy, or kindness, or decency. Over half of voters chose someone else in the last election. They knew it. Those who cast in with him are left to ignore or excuse it. Or, God help us, applaud it. Much as they might prefer to, they can’t deny it.
Read his words if you must:
“A very sad thing happened last night in Hollywood. Rob Reiner, a tortured and struggling, but once very talented movie director and comedy star, has passed away, together with his wife, Michele, reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME, sometimes referred to as TDS. He was known to have driven people CRAZY by his raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump, with his obvious paranoia reaching new heights as the Trump Administration surpassed all goals and expectations of greatness, and with the Golden Age of America upon us, perhaps like never before. May Rob and Michele rest in peace!”
It’s clear he didn’t mean “sad” or “peace.”
A few weeks ago, I wrote a column that referred to Trump as an “a$$#ole.” It’s definitionally true, but I chose not to send it in: too offensive, maybe, even for me. I posted the commentary on my blog, though. I’d have included the word in the above list, but I hate to be repetitive.
Trump insinuated that the Reiners deserved to be killed; that it happened because of Rob’s public – and accurate – criticisms. So anxious to obnox was he that he spewed before it was known that the killer was their son. In doing so, in blaming it on Rob’s remonstrations, he assumed the killer was a Trump supporter, murderously enraged by insults to Dear Leader. Remarkable: Believing it was his people who did it, unsubtly excusing it, implicitly allowing for more. He has, after all, demanded the death of many of his perceived enemies. And he knows the death threats and attacks that his words engender among his cultists. He is truly, deeply, sick.
Only someone as pernicious as Trump wouldn’t have predicted the assassin was a person very close. Only someone as sycophantic as Senator Tom Cotton would say this after the murders of Australian Jews celebrating the first night of Hanukkah:
" ... you had a man of Pakistani descent and a son who had been born in Australia and yet had not seemed to assimilate into their culture. It's another reminder about why birthright citizenship is not a good idea."
That kind of nonsequiturian exploitation and spineless surrender is why Trump gets away with every law he breaks, every bribe and grift by which he enriches himself and his family: He surrounds himself with amoral enablers. His dismissive comments about the murdered Brown students – “things happen” – were on brand, too. He brings shame to us all. MAGA is becoming a murder cult.
Although he welcomes notorious antisemites, I don’t connect Trump to the murders on Bondi (no relation, except in horror) Beach. But I note: the murderers, it’s reported, were ISIS sympathizers. ISIS is evidently responsible for the recent murder of two American servicemen in Libya. Trump bragged repeatedly about “eliminating” ISIS. The brave man who stopped one of the shooters is Muslim. He had to know it was Jews being targeted, because it was an open ceremony. Trump’s and MAGA’s hate for Muslims is as unfounded as his lies about a booming economy.
Which is another truth: despite Trump firing people who produce the numbers, we’ve just learned about rising unemployment and that jobs have not increased under Trump for nearly all of his second term; that inflation continues; that, likely due to his ill-conceived and mismanaged tariffs, blue-collar jobs are declining. And yet, expecting his Foxified, incurious acolytes to believe, Trump continues to lie that the economy is the best since Hammurabi coded. Amidst widespread economic failure, it’s all he has: gaslighting or blaming President Joe Biden, who left him with rising employment and declining inflation.
For now, we’re stuck with Trump, the most venal person ever to occupy the office. If Democrats can overcome Republican election-rigging and retake Congress, he can, to some degree, be held in check. If ever again there’s a Democratic president, Trump’s name should be expunged from every federal building and his narcissistic construction projects pulverized.
We can’t forget what he’s done, though, lest it ever befall us again.
Yet many continue to support him. What does that say about those people.
ReplyDeleteIt's all a distraction from this.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.ted.com/talks/carole_cadwalladr_this_is_what_a_digital_coup_looks_like?referrer=playlist-most_popular_ted_talks_of_2025&autoplay=true
Criminally psychopathic tRump is the distillation of every 'ugly American' trope to have been written in the last 100 years. Watching his absurd behavior transform our nation into a banana republic, one year in, gives me pause when thinking about 2026 and beyond. Short of him taking the dirt nap after keeling over on the toilet, I believe he will stop at nothing to rig the mid-terms and use every lever of power to stay in office past 2028. He is so much worse than even I had predicted, and my 24-year-old Grandson is already committing to active participation in battling the tRump regime's political coup, blow-for-blow, bloodshed be-damned. I wish it weren't so obvious how much turmoil is headed our way, but averting my eyes ain't an option. Optimism is in short supply of late, but I battle to maintain it on a daily basis.
ReplyDeleteGood luck with the optimism thing. Maybe there's a horribleness line beyond which even MAGA won't follow him. If so, it remains unseen.
DeleteThanks. It's my foundational default, much to my wife's everlasting chagrin. A good friend in college, whom I'm thankfully reconnected to again, once told me during a lively discussion in the Theater Arts Green Room, "Bob, if you saw a guy with a pile of dog shit in his lap, you'd praise him for having such a nice pile of dog shit!" He wasn't wrong then, nor now. I'm OK with that LOL forever.
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