Hearing that Rob Reiner and his wife Michelle were murdered last night was just too much. He was a good-hearted man who enhanced popular culture with his writing, acting, and directing. I’m not going to discuss suspects or motivations here; it’s too soon. Let the criminal justice system sort things out first.
But guess who couldn’t keep his thoughts to himself? This is from Rolling Stone:
As the film world and people of good taste around the world mourn the sudden death of legendary director Rob Reiner and his wife Michele Singer, President Donald Trump jumped to make the apparent double homicide about himself.
In an early morning Truth Social post, the president wrote that the couple had “passed away,” 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,” Trump added. “May Rob and Michele rest in peace.”
He can’t even fake being human. This is ghastly.
In other inappropriate responses news: After the Brown University shooting yesterday Trump “truthed” that a suspect was in custody. Except, when he wrote that, there wasn’t. Authorities frantically contacted Brown students to tell them to say sheltered. Then someone was taken into custody, but no information about this person was released for several hours. MAGA had a meltdown; they wanted to know whether the perp was an Islamic jihadist or Antifa, so they could know who to hate on.
Most appear to have settled on “Islamic jihadist.” The “person of interest” was then identified as a 24-year-old named Benjamin Erickson from Wisconsin. Even then, far-right sites like Gateway Pundit (to which I do not link) insisted Erickson had barged into the classroom of a Jewish professor yelling something in Arabic and began shooting. But lo; Erickson has been released. Apparently whatever evidence they had on him didn’t hold up. He wasn’t the guy. And as of this writing there are no new suspects.
Trump, ever an asshole, then offered solace to the students and faculty at Brown by saying “Things can happen.”
Shortly after the terrible shooting in Australia, authorities in Australia said they were going to tighten gun laws. The U.S. Right — who finally had some real Islamtic terrorists to hate on — were outraged (example). They appear to be angrier about Australian gun control than about the deaths of fifteen people.
But speaking of inappropriate, asshole responses, Benjamin Netanyahu had to flap his lips and blame Australia for the shooting. In particular, he blamed Australia’s recognition of a Palestinian state. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese brushed this off.
See also GOP Lawmakers Call for Purge of Muslims After Bondi Beach Shooting. Because more bigotry is just what we all need, right?
There were a number of other injustices in the world today. But one I want to mention is at ProPublica, Trump Officials Celebrated With Cake After Slashing Aid. Then People Died of Cholera.
On the one-month anniversary of President Donald Trump’s inauguration earlier this year, a group of his appointed aides gathered to celebrate.
For four weeks, they had been working overtime to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development, freezing thousands of programs, including ones that provided food, water and medicine around the world. They’d culled USAID’s staff and abandoned its former headquarters in the stately Ronald Reagan Building, shunting the remnants of the agency to what was once an overflow space in a glass-walled commercial office above Nordstrom Rack and a bank.
There, the crew of newly minted political figures told the office manager to create a moat of 90 empty desks around them so no one could hear them talk. They ignored questions and advice from career staff with decades of experience in the field.
Despite the steps to insulate themselves, dire warnings poured in from diplomats and government experts around the world. The cuts would cost countless lives, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the other Trump officials were told repeatedly. The team of aides pressed on, galvanized by two men who did little to hide their disdain for the agency: first Peter Marocco, a blunt-spoken Marine veteran, and then 28-year-old Jeremy Lewin, who, despite having no government or aid experience, often personally decided which programs should be axed.
By the third week in February, they were on track to wipe out 90% of USAID’s work. Created in 1961 to foster global stability and help advance American interests, USAID was the largest humanitarian donor in the world. In just a month’s time, the small band of appointees had set in motion its destruction.
In a corner conference room, it was time to party. They traded congratulatory speeches and cut into a sheet cake.
“Cholera” is a word that doesn’t mean much to most Americans these days, but massive cholera epidemics were common in the 19th century. The disease came on quickly and was nearly always fatal. Communities struck by cholera were decimated in short order. I’ve been in old cemeteries in which entire sections were victims of cholera epidemics. And it was a nasty death. Cholera causes diarrhea so intense that people die of dehydration and electrolyte imbalances within a few hours. A handful of people in the U.S. still die of it every year, but it’s unusual. The bacteria that causes cholera is spread through poor sanitation, usually sewage getting into drinking water. So now it’s mostly a third world disease. Probably most Americans have no idea what it is.
Please do read the entire ProPublica story. It’s a testament to the callous indifference and irresponsibility of the entire Trump team. One could argue that other people should be taking more responsibility in the Sudan, and of course they should. But cutting off aid suddenly, with no warning or time to look for new funding for their programs, was a death sentence to a lot of people. And officials including Marco Rubio have been lying about it,
"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!"
This fucking vile, insane, piece of shit has the nuclear codes for christ sake! He should be in a fucking straight jacket.
I said to my wife this morning that diaper don would say something like "he never said good things about me" but I certainly was being way too generous. Two inches, two lousy fucking inches.
Yeah, this is the clearest sign yet of Trump's mental decline (for anyone who isn't already convinced). When a TV reporter caught Trump coming out of Marine One and told him that Justice Ginsberg died, Trump composed himself and said something dignified (but unmemorable). In my observation, not speaking ill of the dead was one of the very few social graces that he definitely possessed. Now that's gone.
“they wanted to know whether the perp was an Islamic jihadist or Antifa, so they could know who to hate on”
Respectfully.
You forgot to include that in MAGA land that a trans person was a likely shooter.
You're right. I keep forgetting that.
FBI is probably now searching for a Trans Marxist Antifa Jihadi.
O.T. re. the Susie Wiles interview, I went to my go to source for magat thought trends, Breitbart! The "editors" there wrote a nice puff piece about how great Susie is and how diaper don and the rest of the "cabinet " just think she is the greatest chief of staff in the history of man kind! The Brietbart commenters however are calling for her head on a platter, how could she be so ignorant to sit for an interview with Vanity Fair. So stump has his orders, Susie must go, see ya!
O.T. – A couple of hours ago on TV, Arizona Senator Gallego stated that Stumpy's screed today makes it clear that the administration's goal re. Venezuela is regime change… he thinks military means will be used if necessary. He also conjectured that the real end game is the current Secretary of State's long held dream of regime change in Cuba. Y'all can figure out that it kinda makes sense.
My other comment is this: Even though it is somewhat comforting to have my suspicions about what's really going on confirmed by TV analysts on left-leaning TV, I find it frustrating that the experts doing the analysis (based on their very real actual experience in govt) don't seem to realize that the way our current government is working has no resemblance to real Constitutional governing. IMO nobody should have any expectation that the "way things work" in normal US governance is applicable. All of that has been set aside completely, and has been replaced by the way organized crime conducts its operations… all of the real decision making is kept secret and whatever is presented to the public is fiction. Always.
I'm not sure the Suzy Wiles interview is stupidity. Maybe it is. The other possibility is that they really don't care how bad it makes them look. It's a great distraction from ICE, Caribbean murders, tariffs, inflation, our personal data stolen by DOGE, the gutting of the federal agencies, particularly the elimination of Inspector Generals (corruption watchdogs). Everything they are doing seems to me to point to attempting to make sure this lawless White House regime will be able to simply stay in power permanently. Sorry for the pessimism.
Reality does not always have a happy ending. One can see an impending train wreck from a distant high point, but one's "pessimistic forecast" changes nothing. No blame is warranted or deserved toward the observer.
The mess continues without let-up. It has become exhausting for people who see no window to escape the mental morass the mess brings.
Many seem at the point of racing through a fog with no vision and no control willing to try anything to ease the panic that overcomes them. How else can one explain all this senseless and destructive behavior?
In the process the panic spreads to those of us who think the fog may lift and someone may get some control before madness reigns. So far it looks dicey that will happen. The madness continues its malignant expansion. There are at least some hopeful signs of remission. We can reasonably expect this story will not end well though, as it might. We are in desperate need of a wave of sanity.