IF YOU CAN'T SAY ANYTHING NICE.

Don't say anything a-tall.  I'm looking at you, Mr President.  As are the editors of The (Not Detroit) Free Press.  "Mr. President, Don’t Mock the Dead."

In his 50-plus years as a top American entertainer, Reiner—like most major Hollywood figures—was a liberal. And like a solid percentage of the country, he did not care for Trump. But there is no indication this was an act of political violence, and it is obscene for the president to try to make it into one.

Many Americans have come to expect the president to be petulant and self-centered. We’ve become inured to his wild social media ramblings. Yet he still finds ways to shock us on occasion; his statement on Reiner is exceptionally beneath the office he holds. Rob Reiner was not a political figure. He was merely an outspoken supporter of liberal causes, which of course was his right.

After a horrific weekend that included a lethal shooting at Brown University, the killing of three Americans by ISIS in Syria, and the slaughter of 16 people celebrating Hanukkah on a beach in Australia, the leader of the free world should be looking to unite Americans and condemn bigotry and violence wherever they take place in the world. Instead, he is kicking the corpse of someone who made movies that brought Americans together.

We're in the punishment cycles of a grim strategy outcome (many keyboard warriors refer to a cold civil war) and it's likely the nastiness will go on.

Trump almost certainly won’t walk it back, and the usual suspects will find some rhetorical contortions with which to defend this outburst. But there is no point in anyone defending this. It should be widely opposed—particularly by those who otherwise support him.

Yes, it's easy enough to find "the usual suspects" online, with the usual these-are-the-rules-you-made battle cries.  On the same services, though, are the likes of Derek Hunter, with a stronger rendition of "if you can't say anything nice."  "It’s Not Hard to NOT Be a Jerk."  

Well, yes, Our President can be a jerk, and on many policy issues, he's my jerk, but I have a loss function that would reward political opponents who aren't soft on crime and willing to dicker on immigration policy.

The President will find it harder to get support from Republicans looking to get reelected next year, making that tweet another example of the equivalent of shoving a stick in your own front spokes while riding a bike down a hill.

Ultimately, life is better, both personally and professionally, when you stop being a jackass as often as you can muster it. It’s not hard, it’s really not. The world does not need to hear every thought you have on every subject, and if you think it’s cruel in a moment of tragedy, the world probably doesn’t need to hear it at all. You’ll be better for it, whether you realize it or not.

Actor James Woods, a frequent sparring partner with Mr Reiner and others of the Hollywood Left on social media, understood the role of bourgeois norms in doing business.  I remember Mr Woods only as Karl Weiss, artist, in the long-ago Holocaust mini-series on television; Mr Reiner cast him in Ghosts of Mississippi two decades later.

“I judge people by how they treat me, and Rob Reiner was a Godsend in my life. We got along great, we loved each other… He was always on my side,” Woods said. “When people would say to me, ‘What do you think of his politics?’ I would say, ‘I think Rob Reiner is a great patriot. Do I agree on many of his ideas on how that patriotism should be enacted, to celebrate the America that we both love? No. He doesn’t agree with me either, but he also respects my patriotism. We had a different path to the same destination, which was a country we both love.”

He added, “Because you disagree with people doesn’t mean that you have to hate people.”

Mr Reiner, who undoubtedly found little policy common ground with Charlie Kirk, noted that permanently silencing people was not a productive way to advance policy.

Sasha "Free Thinking Through the Fourth Turning" Stone, who knows a thing or two about those rules the institutional left made, notes, probably correctly, that the punishment cycles will go on long after Mr Reiner's minyan.

All Trump had to do was say nothing about Rob Reiner, or else offer a statement of sympathy. But he didn’t want to. He wanted to hit back at someone who had been obsessed with him, consumed by that obsession, for ten years. So Trump took the shot and started another major battle in our Virtual Civil War.

And the beat will go on.  Matt Margolis, with the generally Trump-friendly Pajamas Media, suggests it's time for an intervention from Our President's chief of staff.

President Donald Trump is taking heat from both sides of the aisle for his Truth Social post about Rob Reiner's death, and frankly, he deserves every bit of it. I was really hoping Trump would stay silent on this one, but when I saw he'd posted something lengthy, I knew it wasn't going to be good.

Democrats pounced on Trump’s post immediately, and for once, they had a point. Republican lawmakers are also slamming Trump for his unbecoming post—again, much deserved. I've heard from conservative friends who are genuinely shocked and disappointed by what he wrote, all reaching the same conclusion: Trump is truly his own worst enemy.

Our President has long been his own worst enemy, but perhaps he has calculated that he returned to the White House despite what happened from November 2020 to November 2022 and thus he can get away with anything.  That's unlikely to end well.  I wonder what sort of palace intrigue is going on what with the chief of staff, Susie Wiles, giving Vanity Fair an interview.