Embedded Files
Mar 21, 2026
On Friday night, Robert Mueller, the former FBI director and special counsel who led the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, died at the age of 81. A decorated Vietnam veteran and longtime public servant, Mueller occupied a central, and often contested, place in American political life for decades.
Within hours of the news becoming public, Donald Trump responded on his social media platform with a brief message: “Good, I’m glad he’s dead. He can no longer hurt innocent people!”
The reaction was immediate. Critics condemned the statement as cruel and beneath the office. Supporters defended it as blunt honesty. The divide itself was familiar.
I did not expect to write anything today. I did not intend to add another voice to what is already a loud and crowded reaction. But at a certain point, silence begins to feel like surrender.
And so, like many others, I find myself at something of a loss for words.
Except I want to make a single, simple point.
This is not normal behavior.
Before anyone attempts to analyze it, contextualize it, justify it, or explain it away—and I have no intention of doing any of those things—we should first agree on one clear and basic premise.
This is not normal behavior.
Not politically normal.
Not culturally normal.
Not normal, full stop.
And I do not mean that in an academic or psychological sense. This is not a question for experts or frameworks. It requires only common sense.
This isn’t complicated. It’s something most people understand by the time they’re eight years old: you don’t celebrate when someone dies.
You may disagree with someone.
You may dislike them.
You may believe they were wrong.
But there is a line.
And you do not cross it.
We do live in a world that is, in many ways, abstract. We are encouraged to be open-minded, to extend understanding, to make space for freedom of expression.
But openness is not the same as the absence of standards.
There are moments—uncommon, but unmistakable. when openness gives way to something more basic. Moments that do not require interpretation so much as recognition.
THIS IS NOT NORMAL
Not from a president.
Not from a public figure.
Not from a political adversary. From anyone.
From a friend.
From a relative.
From a colleague.
From a stranger passing you on the street.
In those contexts, the verdict would not be difficult.
It would not require deliberation. There would be no instinct to contextualize or explain.
The reaction would be immediate—a quiet but certain recognition that something is happening that is terribly wrong .
And there is something more troubling: that we will grow accustomed to it.
In which case, that what should shock us no longer does.
And that is how the line begins to move.
Not all at once, but gradually.
I do not want to analyze here. There will be time for that.
There always is.
For now, there is only this:
This is not normal behavior.
And before anything else—before the explanations, before the arguments—we need to accept that.
It is a sobering reality.
And even more disturbing to process the consequences and implications.
Right now I don’t have the words.
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