You don’t have to make excuses for what Trump says when he oversteps the line. He’s not your father.
Robert Mueller died this weekend, of complications arising from Parkinson’s disease, and Donald Trump reacted exactly as you would have expected. I got several paragraphs into a lengthy evaluation of Mueller’s career as America’s top cop — unlike others, I still remember the prosecution of Ted Stevens — and his even more infamous afterlife as author of the Mueller report, and then I realized you can already go read Andy McCarthy for a more qualified evaluation of his mistakes than any I could write.
And anyway, I know the real reason you’re here. You’re here because Trump marked the occasion with his typical measure of dignity: “Robert Mueller just died. Good. I’m glad he’s dead. He can no longer hurt innocent people!”
Among America’s cash-for-engagement keyboard warriors, the reaction to this also went exactly as you would have predicted: The “Resistance” left fell swooning to their fainting couches (“How disgustingly unthinkable, such a crude sentiment from Trump!”) while the MAGA right loudly thumped their chests in agreement and approval. The performative offense-taking was equal to the peacocking celebrations, and all of it felt soullessly contrived. (Allow me to link to the savvy assessment of cynical outsider Ben Dreyfuss, which matches my own — for I cannot, alas, quote it directly in these pages.)
To briefly dispense with the obvious: Trump’s statement was thoroughly tasteless and utterly beneath the dignity of a president. But what else is new? This is the man who, just last December, reacted to the murder of Rob Reiner and his wife by their son by crowing that Reiner had really been killed by “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” Have you forgotten so soon? (I suspect voters haven’t, no matter what MAGA’s true believers think.)
I am less concerned with Donald Trump’s manifest incapacity for grace than with those who reflexively adopt it as their new moral philosophy as well. MAGA once defended Trump’s intemperate bleats by saying, “Well, he may be crass and vicious and degrade the overall discourse, but I support what he’s doing.” That was actually a reasonably defensible logic. But over time — inevitably with extended exposure, perhaps — that logic has been replaced by imitative affect: Trump is vulgar and petty, his top lieutenants are vulgar and petty: Let’s all be vulgar and petty now.
No thanks. Donald Trump will say what he will, and I can’t control it. Being outraged about it feels like wasted effort — the karmic boomerang is winging its way back around to slice off this administration’s fingertips in November, regardless. So imagine thinking one way or another that you have to go out there and defend it. You don’t have to make excuses for what Trump says when he oversteps the line. He’s not your father.