For years, President Donald Trump has provided crass and insensitive feedback about individuals who died — particularly his foes.
But on Saturday, he explicitly celebrated the death of former FBI Director Robert Mueller, writing, “Good, I’m glad he’s dead.”
As a particular counsel, Mueller probed Trump and his 2016 marketing campaign because the chief of the Russia investigation throughout the president’s first time period.
“Robert Mueller just died,” Trump posted on social media shortly after the death was first reported. “Good, I’m glad he’s dead. He can no longer hurt innocent people!”
While it was the fruits of a yearslong sequence of such feedback by Trump, it was hardly an remoted incident.
In 2017, one of many first huge controversies of Trump’s first time period was his insensitive alleged feedback to the widow of a soldier who had simply died. Trump was accused of telling the widow that her husband “knew what he signed up for.” And whereas Trump claimed it had been a “very respectful conversation,” the White House finally seemed to tacitly confirm the feedback.
After John McCain died in August 2018, Trump in early 2019 resumed his yearslong attacks on the previous Arizona senator. He criticized the Republican for killing Trump’s well being care legislation, saying, “I never was a fan of John McCain, and I never will be.” Trump additionally falsely claimed the not too long ago deceased had graduated “last in his class” and falsely accused him of sharing the “Steele dossier” with the FBI earlier than the 2016 election.
In late 2019, Trump attacked one other legislative foe who died that yr — longtime Rep. John Dingell — by suggesting the Michigan Democrat was “looking up” from hell.
Dingell’s widow, Democratic Rep. Debbie Dingell of Michigan, responded: “I’m preparing for the first holiday season without the man I love. You brought me down in a way you can never imagine and your hurtful words just made my healing much harder.”
By 2021, Trump’s jabs on the deceased turned extra instantaneous. About 24 hours after former Secretary of State Colin Powell died, Trump released a statement criticizing his “big mistakes on Iraq” and calling him a “classic RINO” who was at all times “the first to attack other Republicans.”
(Powell had overtly criticized Trump and crossed get together traces to vote in opposition to him in 2016 and 2020.)
And Trump’s tendency has actually ramped up in latest months.
In December, he reposted a series of attacks on the Kennedy family simply hours after John F. Kennedy’s granddaughter, environmental journalist Tatiana Schlossberg, died following a terminal mind most cancers prognosis.
That got here simply a couple of weeks after arguably Trump’s most insensitive feedback about a deceased critic. And this wasn’t simply somebody who had not too long ago died, thoughts you, however somebody who had been brutally murdered.
Shortly after the killing of director Rob Reiner and his spouse, Trump prompt Reiner had died from “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”
“He was known to have driven people CRAZY by his raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump, with his obvious paranoia reaching new heights” not too long ago, Trump added.
Numerous Republicans criticized Trump’s post.
But simply three months later, right here is Trump once more.
Except this time, he’s not simply saying crass issues about somebody who died, however slightly explicitly celebrating their demise.