The house is full of family here to celebrate Christmas, and delightful and distracting as they are, President Donald Trump isn't too far from my thoughts.
The thought I can't get out of my head is that President Trump just missed a huge opportunity. And it was a rare miss for the man with such insightful and rare gut instincts.
Like all presidents, Trump is preoccupied with some VERY BIG THINGS.
The Brown University shootings. The Bondi Beach terror attack on Jews celebrating Hanukkah. Targeted Venezuelan drug boats. The murders of American soldiers in a Syrian terror attack. Rip-offs and racketeering by Somali pirates in Minnesotastan. Christmas markets overseas either canceled or armed up to forestall Islamic terror attacks. Word that there were hundreds of identified terrorists on U.S. soil, thanks to Joe Biden and President Autopen. Foiled terror attacks in America and worries about the ones we don't know about. GOP betrayals in Indiana. A do-nothing Senate. Democrats are turning every move that Trump makes into a future criminal or impeachable act. Political violence against conservative Americans. Americans are elevating an assassin on the streets of New York to godlike status. And Charlie Kirk's accused assassin smirked in court.
And that's just in the past few days.
Then came the strange and tragic murder of iconic movie director Rob Reiner and his wife.
Police believe that the filmmaker and his wife were murdered by their drug-addled son.
Reiner made a couple of documentary films in the past few years, but his earlier feel-good films have become part of the American cultural canon. This Is Spinal Tap, When Harry Met Sally, The Princess Bride, The Bucket List, Stand by Me, Misery, and many others remain cultural touchstones to this day.
"I'll have what she's having." "These go to eleven ... It’s one louder, isn’t it? It’s not ten." "You can't really dust for vomit." “I’m your number one fan.” “I’m never gonna get out of this town, am I, Gordie?” "Have fun stormin' the castle!" “Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.” "Inconceivable!"
If you know, you know.
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Trump didn't — or didn't care, apparently. But here's what Trump did know.
Reiner was cast by far-left producer Norman Lear to be the liberal stereotype "Meathead" on the TV show All in the Family. In his personal life, Reiner was all Meathead.
The president, rightly determined in his remarks after Reiner's death, clearly demonstrated that the director suffered from Trump Derangement Syndrome.
“Donald Trump is the single most unqualified human being to ever assume the presidency… He is mentally unfit," he told Variety.
“Make no mistake," he told anyone who would listen, "We have a year before this country becomes a full‑on autocracy, and democracy completely leaves us."
“If he wasn’t famous… this would be a crazy person in the park… you’d walk in the other direction,”
He called the president "a con man" and a "criminal." All the time.
None — exactly zero — of his prognostications were remotely true. Others who didn't bother to book up on what Trump actually said or did chorused his opinions. Reiner questioned Trump's intellectual curiosity, but his comments depended upon the intellectual incuriousness of his Rachel Maddow chorus for validation.
Instead of Trump celebrating the life and art of the murder victim Reiner, however, he issued a poop sandwich-like response on Truth Social.
A very sad thing happened in Hollywood last night. Rob Reiner, a tortured and struggling, but once very talented and 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 known as TDS.
He went on about Reiner's mental state, driving other people crazy, and then wrapped up with, "May Rob and Michele rest in peace."
When someone asked him in person about his reaction to the double murder later in the Oval Office, Trump biffed it. He doubled down on what a whack job Reiner was.
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As the left and its allies continue to pile up the body count of their victims, Trump could have used that moment to urge people to come together as Americans and listen to each other instead of harming people with whom they had political disagreements. He could have apologized for his initial reaction and urged unity at Christmas time.
He missed it.
Would it have helped? Yes. Will TDS sufferers change? No. A show of humility and acknowledgement, however, would have elevated the discussion to the seriousness it deserves.
I sure hope President Trump’s instincts kick in in time for Wednesday night's address to the nation.
