"This May Be the Last Time You Ever See Me..."

     Someone once defined for me the difference between an egomaniac and a megalomaniac- "An egomaniac is someone who thinks the world revolves around them," he said, "and a megalomaniac thinks the universe revolves around them."

     I think, after decades of being afflicted by Donald Trump, we know which one he is.

     Last night, the bodies of Rob Reiner and his wife, Michelle, were found by their daughter in their Los Angeles home. Police have since arrested their son, Nick, 32, on suspicion of their murders and he's currently being held on $4,000,000 bond.

     Of course, Donald Trump wasted no time in making it all about himself.

     “Rob Reiner, a tortured and struggling, but once very talented 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 referred to as TDS.

     "He was known to have driven people CRAZY by his raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump, with his obvious paranoia reaching new heights as the Trump Administration surpassed all goals and expectations of greatness, and with the Golden Age of America upon us, perhaps like never before. May Rob and Michele rest in peace!”

     Being the toxic, raging megalomaniac he is, Trump saw the double tragedy through a lens trained, as always, on himself. His opinion of a person, living or dead, inevitably rests entirely on their opinion of him. Mr. Reiner was an outspoken critic of Trump and the GOP in general. And savaging a dead man before his body's even cold is part and parcel to Trump's warped psychopathology.

     And Trump's assertion that Mr. Reiner and his spouse were killed because of his "TDS" is beyond absurd and heartless and is a new low even for him. In fact, they were so unforgivable, even other right wingers have been dog-piling on Trump, including Rep. Thomas Massie, Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene, Ana Navarro and Piers Morgan. Even the Charlie Kirk Show criticized Trump for his despicable comments.

 

     Ironically, in his last TV appearance, Reiner himself predicted the day before Charlie Kirk's death, "This may be the last time you ever see me..." Of course, he wasn't talking about his imminent demise but state-sponsored censorship. His appearance on CNN came on the heels of Jimmy Kimmel's five day suspension.

     And, speaking of Charlie Kirk again, people were outraged over his murder. I, myself, was one of them. There's no excuse for murdering someone and permanently abducting them from their family. The backlash was wildly disproportionate, with people getting doxxed, fired and pilloried on social media just for criticizing Kirk. The hagiographies were furiously written, lawmakers even introduced legislation mandating statues of Kirk to be erected on college campuses at the risk of losing their government funding.

     But this new right wing backlash was not over Reiner's politics but aimed at Trump, showing that we as a nation still have a shred of decency and enough moral character to decry homicidal violence. Yet, there Donald Trump stands, fucking things up as he inevitably does in the wake of a tragedy such as the Brown University shooting in Rhode Island, making everything about himself and referring to himself in the third person.