Trump is winning his own race to the bottom.

Tonight, my husband and I went out to dinner in San Diego. It wasn’t planned, just something we decided on at the last minute. If I’m being honest with myself, and I guess now with hundreds of thousands of you, I didn’t want to go. I wasn’t in the mood for anything. But my husband saw that I needed a break and insisted. I’m glad he did. The news of Rob and Michele Reiner’s deaths gutted me, not because I knew them, but because I deeply valued what they stood for, the way they used their voices, and the impact of their activism at a time we needed it most. Losing them feels like being kicked when you’re already down. Rob was a loud, fearless voice against authoritarianism. A rare talent who used storytelling to shape culture, challenge power, and remind us of our shared humanity. It’s a loss for all of us, and it comes at a moment when we needed him most.

And then the grotesque post from Trump on Truth Social made everything worse.

Donald J. Trump December 15, 2025, 9:51 AM · Truth Social:

“A very sad thing happened last night in Hollywood. 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!”

I’m a writer. Words are what I do. And still, I struggled to find any that could adequately describe the horror of watching the President of the United States mock the deaths of not just his fellow Americans, the people he was elected to serve, but also to be using their passing not just to attack them, but to glorify himself. It wasn’t just distasteful. It was narcissistic, deranged, and un-American. And it reminded me that the presidency, as an institution, has been stripped of all dignity, morality, and even the most basic human decency. It’s fascist theater. And no one in power seems willing to stop it.

As I sat in the restaurant, trying to pretend I wasn’t thinking about any of it, I looked out the window and saw something familiar. Across the street, just past a small intersection, was another restaurant, one I recognized immediately. Earlier this year, that’s where one of the first ICE raids in our area to receive national coverage took place. I remembered watching as workers climbed onto the roof, chased by masked men in tactical gear. This was during the phase when they still claimed they were going after the “worst of the worst,” the ones supposedly leeching off the system. But that wasn’t who they were targeting, and we all knew it. You don’t raid a restaurant in broad daylight and drag people out mid-shift if you’re after people who are not contributing to society. You do that if your goal is fear and to send a message. But there was another side to what happened that day. Between the clouds of tear gas and the chaos of smoke bombs, something else rose up, too: the community. People ran toward the building, not away. They filmed, shouted, and held the line. That day, San Diego didn’t just witness a raid. It witnessed resistance and people coming together to push back.

But tonight, you’d never know any of that had occurred. There was nothing left to mark the spot or remind us that people were dragged out of that building, torn from their lives, and disappeared by the state. It’s just a restaurant now. Beautiful, even. And that’s how fascism works. It relies on memories to fade and on us to let atrocity be overwritten by normalcy. It counts on us forgetting when too many bad things happen back-to-back.

And I kept thinking, over and over again: none of this had to happen. None of it was inevitable. Every piece of it, the violence, the fear, the erosion of law, the attack on our Constitution, all of it was a choice. People voted for him again after everything we had already lived through. And the rest of us are left to endure it. Again.

And then, tonight, I saw a comment on one of my Threads posts, the one where I had shared Trump’s disgusting statement about Rob Reiner. The person wrote, “Respectfully, we can’t keep spreading his words.” But I wholeheartedly disagree. We absolutely have to. Because a lot of people don’t see this. They’re not on Truth Social. They’re not watching the news. They’re checked out, and honestly, I don’t blame them. But if no one shows them what’s happening, they won’t know. And if they don’t know, they can’t fight back. Ignoring evil has never stopped it. Only exposing it has. And isn’t this exactly how we got here in the first place? By looking the other way? By writing him off as the crazy man in the corner and assuming he’d flame out on his own? How did that work out?

We need to start treating this moment with the same moral seriousness that others have treated theirs. Because what we’re living through isn’t just offensive or outrageous, it’s a collapse of basic decency at the highest level of power. The President of the United States mocked the death of a man who criticized him, and not a single Republican leader near the top of power stood up to condemn it. Maybe a few voices on the sidelines offered mild concern, but no one close to him dared speak the truth. Because they’re too afraid of losing his base. Too afraid of being next. Too invested in the machinery of power, he built to risk stepping off. That is the moral failure, not just of one man, but of an entire political party that has allowed cruelty, narcissism, and authoritarianism to define them. There is no line he can cross that will make them stop. And there’s no amount of disgrace they aren’t willing to absorb in exchange for power. This isn’t just Trump’s failure. It’s theirs. All of them.

I’m going to set the news aside tonight. There’s already been more than enough to carry, and sometimes it helps to step back and take in the bigger picture.

So maybe that’s where we are now. It was a very tough weekend in an already very hard year. And as soul-crushing as it is to live in a country now openly, and rightfully pitied by the allies who once stood beside us, I keep reminding myself: sometimes you have to hit bottom before you can rebuild into something stronger. Something worthy. We’ve been unraveling slowly for a long time now. Institutions bending, norms breaking, and still we convince ourselves it’s not that bad. But this, all of this, is part of the reckoning. I don’t know what’s coming next. But I believe we’ll get through it. And I believe it will lead us to a better version of this country, one we can be proud, once again, to call our own.

It’s a complicated thing to care this much about a country that so often doesn’t care back. To hold onto hope that it can get better, even while it’s actively hurting people you love. And to still feel a deep responsibility to keep showing up, to stay engaged, to keep telling the truth, even when it feels like nothing is changing. And that is exactly why we have to. Every single day until this country becomes the place it was always supposed to be.

I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather

P.S. If you’ve made it this far, chances are we see things the same way. You can help keep this work going by subscribing to my Substack; there’s a free option, or you can become a paid subscriber for just $5 a month. Paid subscriptions help me reach more people, cover more ground, and keep telling the truth about what’s happening to our country.