I am at a loss. Not for words, obviously, as I have plenty for you this morning. No, when this year began with the inauguration of Donald Trump to a second term in office as our president I made a decision,  and that was to stop trying to work out what motivates him and explains his supporters, the people whom he understood so well when he suggested they would not abandon him even if he shot someone in broad daylight on Fifth Avenue. I also knew the news would be filled daily with outrages, each day more outrageous than the last, and if I wasn’t careful this would become a blog about him and I would endanger my own peace of mind.

For my own sanity, I have tried to steer clear of taking the bait. I’m appalled at the zero sum game American life has become, where as Gore Vidal said, “It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.” I find the redecoration of the Oval Office vulgar, the paving over of Jackie Kennedy’s Rose Garden a sacrilege, and the demolition of the East Wing to make way for a grand ballroom antithetical to American values. I could easily fill these pages with nothing but my reactions to this administration’s antics.

But, I don’t want to write about Donald Trump.

We’ve heard words used to describe him like sociopath, like narcissist, and like malignant.  But now he’s done something that I honestly thought must be a hoax when I first heard of it.  Maybe a clever bit from Colin Jost and Michael Che over at SNL, or Jon Stewart at The Daily Show.

I don’t want to write about Donald Trump, but this morning I must.

I must because the utter lack of humanity, the total breakdown of decorum, the infantile hypocrisy, and the bald-faced lying cannot continue to pass unremarked. I am only one voice, but I believe I am one of many who believe this has all gone too far. And it started with a social media post. I’m going to include it in its entirety below because I think it’s the single most disgusting thing Donald Trump has done since returning to power.  And that’s saying something!

Rob Reiner is, objectively, one of the finest film directors ever – The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally, A Few Good Men, Spinal Tap, Misery, Stand By Me – that is the history of American cinema in my lifetime.  Add to that his role as Meathead Stivic on All in the Family, and we are not just talking about a celebrity, but a national treasure.  He and his wife Michele were found dead in their home last Sunday night; their own son Nick, with a well-documented history of drug abuse and mental health issues, has subsequently been arrested and charged with their murders.  This is a national tragedy.

We need our president to represent what is best about America and Americans.  We need him or her to console us when we are in mourning, to help us make some sense out of the senseless, and to unite us as a nation and as a people.  But Donald Trump took to social media and said this instead:

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!

@realDonaldTrump on Truth Social

I don’t know what to do with that.  As I said, I first thought it was a spoof.  It is so over the top, so beyond the pale, so out of bounds, so… I could go on, I can keep coming up with phrases that mean, essentially, WTF?

I can shout words at it.  But I, I can’t understand it.

I am completely baffled.  This is hideous.  Two people have just been murdered.  And this is his response? I cannot figure out what he thinks he’s accomplishing by doing this.

Remember the reactions from Donald Trump supporters when Charlie Kirk was murdered and people were criticized, condemned, fired from jobs, and even threatened with deportation for not being sufficiently mournful or appropriately respectful?  And here we have the President of the United States using the occasion of a recently murdered man and his wife to settle old scores (the animus between Rob Reiner and Donald Trump was public and well known) with a succession of lies, not just about the circumstances of the murder, but also about the state of his own administration and the country he leads.

It is, if I could sum it up in one word, grotesque.

But it goes deeper than that.  Because we know that this won’t affect the people that think they like him or the people that think that he’s on their side.  Not literally, but he’s just shot someone on Fifth Avenue, and you know he’s probably right – he’s won’t lose a single vote over this.

This is a crucial takeaway:  the President of the United States of America has made lying absolutely normal.  Set aside for a moment that his screed was in response to a tragic double murder.  The administration surpassing all goals and expectations of greatness…The golden age of America upon us.  Maybe somebody somewhere still sucks this stuff up. Maybe his supporters still swallow this balderdash and believe it.  But anybody buying groceries or paying bills knows that none of it is true.  The President of the United States calls the truth fake news.  And he calls lies alternative facts.  He’s been doing that since he got into the White House the first time.  It’s his schtick.

A truly great American dies, his son under arrest for his murder, and the President of the United States takes out his phone and types a self-serving pack of lies and personal aggrandizement at a moment when the tragedy of it calls for sympathy not recrimination. Who are we now that such hideousness can be broadcast from such a high position and in a week it will probably all be forgotten or eclipsed by something ten times worse?