No. of Recommendations: 16
"Robert Mueller died today, at age 81. Decent people around the world mourn his passing. Americans who know about public service recognize him as a stellar example. If the phrase “with privilege, comes responsibility” can apply to any Americans of recent history, the list might start with him.
And today, the person who is now on his 24th golfing trip to Mar-a-Lago of his second term—the actual number, at millions of dollars per trip in public expense, while the world reels from a war he started on a whim, while families he promised to help are struggling with medical expenses and gas prices and tariff increases and everything else—today that same person wrote publicly of Mueller:
Good, I’m glad that he is dead.
This is the most despicable public statement by an American public official in my lifetime.
It needs to be recognized as such.
Any head of state who can say this in public about a countryman, even about a political adversary, is a moral monster. Either he has no ability whatsoever to empathize with others; or he has no sense whatsoever of a leader’s duty; or he has no remaining cognitive ability whatsoever to “filter” what he says. Or all three.
If I thought Trump had ever heard of John Donne, I would remind him of “no man is an island.” If I thought he had ever been seriously in any place of worship, I would remind him that none teaches being “glad” at another person’s death. If I thought he had a soul, I would recommend that he attend to it.
Just while I’m at it, here is how Donne’s most famous passage ends:
Any man’s death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.
Whatever your political views, including about “the Mueller report,” respect Robert Mueller’s example of service. And stand up against Trump’s example of depravity. —James Fallows
