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TRUMP’S ROB REINER MURDER COMMENTS: TRUMP’S HATE-O-RAMA CONTINUTES

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Donald Trump’s comments about the murder of Rob Reiner and his wife Michelle Reiner have ignited a firestorm of outrage. There has always been the question of whether Trump’s hatred and cruelty had a limit or bottom.

Now we know. Nope.

The Atlantic’s Peter Wehrner warnsTrump’s “inferno of hate is intensifying.”

The actor and director Rob Reiner and his wife, the producer and photographer Michele Singer Reiner, were found stabbed to death in their home on Sunday. Yesterday, their son Nick, who has spoken about his bouts of drug addiction and homelessness, was arrested on suspicion of murder. With that news, a terrible event became doubly tragic.

Reiner was beloved by almost everyone who knew him. On social media, friends described him as generous, kind, funny, and a caring soul. The One Tree Hill actress Sophia Bush called him an “almost indescribably wonderful man.”

But none of that mattered to Donald Trump, who tore into the murdered Hollywood star.

On Truth Social, President Trump described Reiner as “a tortured and struggling, but once very talented movie director and comedy star.” He added, without a shred of evidence, that Reiner’s death was “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.” And just to be sure he was clear, Trump continued: “He was known to have driven people CRAZY by his raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump.”

A few hours later, standing in the Oval Office, Trump was asked about the backlash to his comments. Instead of apologizing, he ramped up his attacks. “Well, I wasn’t a fan of his at all,” he said. “He was a deranged person, as far as Trump is concerned.”

He recaps some of Trumps greatest hate hits including his deameaning comments about the late Arizona Sen. John McCain and goes on to write:

At this stage, more than 10 years after Trump first descended a gold-rimmed escalator into the political scene, there is a temptation to dismiss his comments because they have become commonplace. Don’t let Trump live rent-free in your head, some on the right advise. Don’t waste time chasing his foolish and cruel comments, some of his critics warn. It’s oxygen to him. His defenders insist he’s the P. T. Barnum of American politics, a brilliant self-promoter and showman, and that it’s a mistake to pay too much attention to his words.

In fact, it’s a mistake to ignore them. Trump’s malignant narcissism is the most essential thing to understand about him.

Heraclitus taught that character is destiny. In Trump’s case, his sociopathy is destiny. His narcissism; his lack of conscience, remorse, or empathy; his pathological lying and grandiosity; his sense of entitlement, impulsivity, and aggression; his cruelty, predatory behavior, and sadism—these are the forces that drive him. If we don’t understand that, we understand almost nothing of importance about him. And beware: When a man with Trump’s personality feels caged in, when he feels besieged and abandoned and begins to lose control of events, he becomes more desperate and more dangerous.

Trump’s personal flaws have seeped into the MAGA movement he leads, which now controls the Republican Party. Megyn Kelly, the former Fox News anchor who, after she flamed out at NBC, has remade herself into a podcaster and ingratiated herself into MAGA world, offers a useful case study of how this works in practice.

…Trump sets the pace, and his apparatchiks follow. Many of them have gained power and made money dumping toxic sewage into our civic water supply. But their devotion comes at a personal cost. Those who relish cruelty, who take special delight in dehumanizing others, are engaging in self-harm of a certain kind. “When we desecrate the divinity of others,” the author Brené Brown wrote, “we desecrate our own, and we betray our humanity.”

Trump’s empathy-and-decency challenged comments have been angrily denounced by Democrats, some Republicans (as is expected House Speaker Mike Johnson skirted the issue and wouldn’t condemn Trump), some MAGA celebrities and even neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes. But is this latest example be enough to impact his polls? The bottom line is that we’ve danced this dance before…it’s always the same. Trump outrage, outraged reaction, it dies down and barely impacts his poll numbers. And it’s onto the next ourtage, the next violation of societal norms. And some people love him for it.