| | | "Donald Trump has survived countless scandals, but his response to Rob Reiner’s death exposes a moral vacancy that defies comprehension. Even for a nation numbed by a decade of his cruelty.
After Rob Reiner, a fixture of American culture, and his wife were stabbed to death in what appears to be a family tragedy involving their own son, the commander in chief surveyed a traumatized population. A population already reeling from a weekend of mass violence including the Bondi Beach shooting during a Hanukkah celebration and a shooting at Brown University. And he decided the appropriate response was to blame Reiner’s murder on the fact that he didn’t like him. My god.
“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.”
—The President of the United States, hours after a double homicide
A family is destroyed. A son is in custody for allegedly killing his parents. The nation is processing multiple acts of mass violence. And the president’s contribution is to mock the dead and suggest political dissent is lethal.
This isn’t leadership. It’s cognitive decay. It’s an old man losing his mind in real time.
We have ended presidencies over far less. Reagan looked confused in a debate and the country lost its mind. Biden stumbled through one bad performance and was forced out. We’ve questioned fitness over a misspoken word, a forgotten name, looking sleepy on camera. But Trump uses a double homicide as an opportunity to air his personal grievances hours after it happens and everyone just shrugs? We’re told to normalize this? To treat mocking the freshly murdered as just another Sunday?
Trump needs to resign. Not because of politics. Because he is demonstrably unfit to hold office. And Republicans need to say it. Out loud. On the record. This man cannot be president if he cannot regulate his emotions and decisions. That’s not a partisan observation. That’s a clinical one.
Trump has trained Americans to expect cruelty. But this crosses into territory that should alarm even his defenders. I’m legitimately curious to see how Republicans defend this one. The bar has been underground for years. And this weekend, Trump literally brought a shovel.
And I’m really not speculating here. It’s observable. You can diagnose him if you have functioning eyes. He has disappears for days without explanation. His public appearances are increasingly marked by such profound disengagement that he’s literally, observably asleep. Drooling in meetings while the world watches. He’s covering up mysterious bruises. But it’s not just his physical health that’s rapidly declining. His mind seems to be doing worse.
At this point, his governing style resembles compulsion more than strategy. And now? He can’t even manage the basic executive function of not hitting send on a deranged rant that even your drunk uncle would have the sense to delete before posting. If a celebrity had posted something like this, their publicist would be physically taking the phone out of their hands.
So my message to Republicans is simple. You know this is wrong. You know this crosses a line. You know that mocking an american hero hours after he dies is not normal presidential behavior. You know this man is deteriorating. You can see it. Everyone can see it. The question is whether you’re willing to admit what the entire world is watching.
Some Republicans will come out and say this is just his style. That he’s just trolling. But you know what isn’t a style? Not being able to shut the fuck up when someone gets murdered. Turning murder into content that disparages the dead is not telling it like it is, it’s telling us exactly how unwell you are. Public mockery of the deceased following a violent death is consistent with severe deficits in empathy and social cognition.
This isn’t some edgy communication strategy. This is a man who is fundamentally unwell. Someone whose impulse control has deteriorated to the point where the gap between thought and action has collapsed entirely. Healthy people don’t do this. Stable people don’t mock dead people hours after their bodies are found. People in control of their faculties don’t use a family’s nightmare to litigate their own grievances.
This is the behavior of someone whose brain is no longer functioning correctly. Whose judgment has eroded. Whose capacity for basic human decency has been obliterated by whatever cognitive decay is happening inside his head.
This isn’t my political opinion. This is clinical assessment. And the patient is running the country. This transcends politics. The question is whether the person holding the world’s most powerful office is capable of regulating himself long enough to function in that role.
Based on what the country witnessed this weekend, the answer is no.""
Liz Plank, Dec. 15 2025 |
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