Trump’s Sick Compulsion to Insult the Dead
Perverse yet predictable, his badmouthing of Robert Mueller is the latest in a long line of cruel posthumous humiliations.
WHEN FORMER FBI DIRECTOR ROBERT MUELLER died last week, the president of the United States weighed in with his customary grace. In a Truth Social post about the man who led the Russia investigation, Donald Trump wrote, “Robert Mueller just died. Good, I’m glad he’s dead.”
A decade ago, that kind of remark might have drawn rebukes from Trump’s party. Instead, it was met with silence. Trump has spewed venom for so long, dancing on the graves of people he hates, that Republicans no longer speak up when he does it.
In a healthy party, leaders would chastise anyone who said such things. They would reprimand the narcissist or at least try to civilize him. But in today’s degenerate GOP, moral influence runs the other way. While most Republicans say nothing, others are adopting Trump’s narcissistic view that he’s entitled to celebrate people’s deaths, because he’s the real victim.
Here are a few of his memorable condolence messages:
In 2016, the parents of Captain Humayun Khan, a Muslim American soldier who had died serving the United States in Iraq, appeared onstage at the Democratic National Convention. Khan’s father spoke as Khan’s mother stood beside him. Trump responded by suggesting that under Islam, Khan’s mother “wasn’t allowed” to speak.
In 2018, Senator John McCain died of cancer. Trump, who had already disparaged McCain’s suffering as a prisoner of war (“I like people that weren’t captured”), responded with months of insults, calling McCain “last in his class” at the Naval Academy (which wasn’t true) and claiming that “McCain didn’t get the job done for our great vets.” Later, Trump sneered that McCain, whose POW injuries limited the use of his arms, “couldn’t get his arm up” when voting against the repeal of the Affordable Care Act in 2017.
In 2019, Congressman John Dingell, a Democratic icon, passed away at 92. Later that year, at a rally in Michigan, Dingell’s home state, Trump complained that Dingell’s widow, Debbie, who had taken over her husband’s seat in Congress, had voted to impeach Trump. The president recalled that Debbie Dingell had said her husband was “looking down” on earth. Then Trump suggested, “Maybe he’s looking up.”
In 2020, Congressman John Lewis, a hero of the civil rights movement, died of cancer at 80. Trump groused that Lewis had slighted him (“He didn’t come to my inauguration. He didn’t come to my State of the Union speeches”), and he refused to say whether Lewis’s life had been impressive (“I can’t say one way or the other. I find a lot of people impressive. I find many people not impressive”). Instead, Trump boasted, “Nobody has done more for black Americans than I have.”
In 2021, Colin Powell, the former secretary of state and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, died of COVID at 84. Trump responded with an emailed statement. “Wonderful to see Colin Powell, who made big mistakes on Iraq and famously, so-called weapons of mass destruction, be treated in death so beautifully by the Fake News Media,” Trump wrote. “He was a classic RINO, if even that, always being the first to attack other Republicans. He made plenty of mistakes, but anyway, may he rest in peace!”
Last year, director Rob Reiner and his wife were stabbed to death, allegedly by their son. In response, Trump wrote that Reiner had died “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 followed up by repeating in the Oval Office that Reiner “was a deranged person” and “was very bad for our country.”
Trump has made similarly pathological remarks about severe injuries, fallen soldiers, and even the murder of someone he claimed as a friend:
In 2018, Trump canceled a visit to a cemetery in France where American servicemen had been buried in World War I. According to the Atlantic, Trump called dead Marines “suckers” and told his staff, “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” He later denied having made these statements, but they were confirmed by his former chief of staff, John Kelly.
In 2022, Paul Pelosi, the husband of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, was attacked by an intruder with a hammer, resulting in a skull fracture. Months later, Trump mocked the attack. While ranting against “crazy Nancy Pelosi,” he interjected sarcastically, “How’s her husband doing?” Trump castigated Speaker Pelosi for opposing “a wall at our border, even though she has a wall around her house, which obviously didn’t do a very good job.”
Last September, a day after conservative activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated, a journalist tried to console Trump outside the White House. “My condolences on the loss of your friend, Charlie Kirk,” said the reporter. “How are you holding up over the last day and a half?” In response, Trump pivoted toward a nearby work area. “I think very good,” he replied cheerfully. “And by the way, right there you see all the trucks. They’ve just started construction of the new ballroom.”
THIS IS NOT THE BEHAVIOR of a normal human being. And Republicans, in accepting this behavior, have ceased to be a normal party.
The only Republicans willing to criticize Trump’s grotesque statements, by and large, are those who represent Democratic-leaning districts or who are on their way out. In December, then-Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, having announced that she was leaving Congress, wrote that the Reiners’ family tragedy “should be met with empathy,” not Trump’s mockery. Rep. Mike Lawler of New York, whose district voted against Trump in 2024, said the Reiners’ deaths “should engender sympathy and compassion.”
But the men who call themselves Republican leaders dare not criticize the president. In December, when reporters asked Speaker Mike Johnson about Trump’s cruel slam at Reiner, Johnson scampered off. “I don’t do ongoing commentary about everything that’s said by everybody in government every day,” he pleaded. And this past Sunday, when reporters asked Senate Majority Leader John Thune about Trump’s parting shot at Mueller, Thune walked away. “I’ve got no words,” he said.
Some Republicans do have words. But they aren’t words of sympathy for the dead or the bereaved. They’re words of sympathy for Trump.
In 2019, when Trump joked about Dingell looking up from hell, George Stephanopoulos asked White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham why Trump had said that. “He has been under attack and under impeachment attack for the last few months, and then just under attack politically for the last two and a half years,” Grisham argued. “The president is a counterpuncher.”
Counterpuncher? John Dingell had been dead for ten months when Trump threw that jab at him.
In December, when Trump took some heat for his comments about Reiner, right-wing columnist Kurt Schlichter again portrayed Trump as a martyr. “It’s pretty pathetic to be so fake and fussy because Trump was insufficiently cordial to a guy who targeted him for nonstop bile for the last decade,” Schlichter tweeted.
This past Sunday on Meet the Press, Kristen Welker pressed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent about Trump’s gloating over Mueller’s corpse. “Do you think it’s appropriate,” she asked, “for the president of the United States to celebrate the death of an American citizen, someone who’s a Bronze Star, Purple Heart recipient and who served in Vietnam?”
Bessent defended Trump:
I was with the president in the green room at Davos, and there was a video playing of what may have been an illegal raid on his home at Mar-a-Lago. They are going through his wife’s wardrobe. And I watched the look in his eye. And I think that neither one of us can understand what has been done to the president and to his family.
Bessent was lying. The FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago was authorized by a court, and it uncovered evidence that Trump had grossly violated laws on retaining classified documents. Furthermore, as Welker reminded Bessent, “Robert Mueller didn’t order that raid.” The search took place in 2022, three years after Mueller’s time as special counsel had ended.
“Is it appropriate for the president to celebrate the death of any American citizen?” Welker then asked. Bessent repeated that Trump was the victim. “Given what has been done to President Trump and his family, it is impossible for either of us to understand what he has been through,” he insisted. “I think that we should all have a little empathy for what has been done to him and his family.”
Empathy. Targeted. Under attack. This is how the new breed of Republicans and right-wing pundits talks about Trump. Every time the president issues a vile outburst, his party implores us to sympathize with his “frustration.”
That’s how narcissism works. It’s not just vanity. It’s a failure to appreciate the concerns of others. A man who feels nothing for the dead or their families, and who sees their tragedies only as a platform for his own grievances, is a classic narcissist. And a party that defends him, putting his pain before the pain of the bereaved, is nothing but an extension of his illness.
He thinks dying is losing. How will he keep from losing to the rest of us?
When the day comes they will demand that we sympathize with his poor wife and family, they may even try to get those of us who do not mourn sufficiently enough or in the way they want us to mourn fired from work. It’s very important that they go fuck themselves, or at the very least they should have some empathy for our frustration over what has been done to us and our families! Nah, they can just fuck off.