Basically what the title says. I think the right at the time of Charlie Kirk's murder was justly outraged by some crazy people's statements about it but unjustly equated any criticism of him after his death as celebration of his murder (which was horrible and should never have happened and anybody who did celebrate his murder deserved whatever consequences they faced). I didn't agree with the silencing of any criticism due to his polarizing nature and how his death was used to score political points by the right, not to mention the debacle regarding Jimmy Kimmel, but could concede the message that it is wrong to speak ill of the dead isn't without some merit.
But whatever moral high ground Donald Trump had has been destroyed by his statement regarding the murder of the Reiners. The statement was inaccurate and petty and the sort of thing nobody in any position of power should say and extremely hypocritical in light of what happened only a few months ago. If the moral underpinning of your argument is you shouldn't say anything distasteful about someone being murdered, you cannot turn around and do it towards someone whose political views you dislike.
CMV!
Edit: A lot of people have argued that the circumstances of Kirk's murder being a political assassination vs the Reiners not being so makes this a different situation. That is objectively true when comparing the two situations, but to me it does not address the fundamental point that the behavior exhibited by Donald Trump was hypocritical. The point of the backlash a few months back was to call out disgusting behavior by some leftists who celebrated Charlie's murder (which again, the backlash towards some was deserved). You can't then make a disgusting statement about someone else's death, especially to imply it was due to his politics, and not be hypocritical.
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Trump is being consistent, because he vocally believes loyalty to his singlemindedly, exclusively good cause (which he cannot describe or define consistently, but that itself is consistent), and from a relativistic standpoint that is actually quite impressive on a moral philosophy level. So, it is morally reprehensible, yes, but it is also not unusual and certainly not hypocritical even just for consistency, but also not hypocritical because hypocrisy means acting against one's beliefs, not just statements. It is questionable whether Trump ever respected Kirk. In fact, there is ample evidence to the contrary. It is by no means against his belief to capitalize on deaths of anyone he believes will generate discourse, however.
It is the basic Conservative take on anything. If you agree with a person everything that person does is good and great and they should never be criticized and their death should be considered the worst thing ever. If you disagree with a person everything they say and do is evil and them dying is just justice being served.
It is an insanely childish view that requires viewing the world in an extremely shallow/limited way, but one held by a massive number of Conservatives.
So agreed that his actions here aren't inconsistent or hypocritical when viewed from the Black and White conservative viewpoint.
From the view of a person that lives in reality and thinks the world and people are complex it is an insane take on both accounts. CK was not a good person, but should not have been killed for his awful ideas and definitely not any kind of martyr. Rob and Michelle Reiner by all accounts were very caring and loving people that had a son with severe drug issues that they tried to help over and over, their death is a tragedy.
Do right wing people have cognitive issues? Is this kind of behavior statistically observed most of the time among right wing individuals, or am I biased?
It is an honest question. Are there studies being conducted on this? Because day after day we see obvious absurdities being committed by the president, yet 30 percent of his electorate does not budge. They choose not to see it. These irreducible people, what are their brains like? Are we all susceptible to blindness, or is there a certain segment of the population that is more susceptible?
I really dont want to conclude something like... right wing people are just more stupid than the general population...but yes. I think it is.
Self righteous is a part of the persona. They actually believe everyone is handed golden bootstraps at birth and is either using them, making them worthwhile humans, or not using them, making them disposable, terrible humans.
This is a true story: We unfortunately had to visit Texas due to a family emergency (none of us wanting to be in any state that overturned women's right to an abortion). While there California experienced a sink hole whereupon a highly educated person (Scientist and engineer) said the sinkhole was a sign that God was punishing liberals. When I asked if Texas had sinkholes (while I am looking that up online (thank you cell phone), they replied "No, we are God's people in Texas". I then showed them a picture showing Texas has had the biggest sinkhole in US history whereupon they replied "nature is a strong force". This is an example of religious and political brainwashing at it's best and we can't overcome that type of indoctrination. It's why any country gets away with warring aggression. Justification based on inability to apply critical thinking and moving out of one's comfort zone. So it is not innate intelligence but rather indoctrination at an early age that is culturally reinforced regardless of political party, religion, viewpoints about others, life, ourselves, etc.
Don't ask me to cite the sources, but there are studies showing things like conservatism is correlated with increased amygdala responses (aka they're motivated by fear and disgust) and reduced ability to feel empathy or understand other points of view.
Yeah, they do. Do some research. The fear center of their brain is larger than people that aren’t conservative for one thing. They seem to fall down rabbit holes of conspiracy theories easier than anyone else. I can go on, but yeah, they’ve got issues and I’m tired of my country suffering for it.
Yes, this is the true slippery slope. Tribalism is a huge problem in this mess.
But the liberal approach is typically designed to be polite and inclusive, creating enormous opportunity for bad actors.
The conservatives in America are locked in, existentially and theoretically, to the extent that they forgive any malfeasance categorized as just part of god’s perfect plan.
Meanwhile, the liberal faction or tribe in America finds itself questioning its leadership, rightly, without an answer.
I personally believe further decentralization of power is the only way to break the cycle of tyranny which has been exacerbated horribly by the massive opportunities our present power structure probides.
This is thus far the only answer I think is addressing the point I made. I did not consider that this is simply a power play by him and consistent with his playbook. I don't know that I fully agree with your definition of hypocrisy because I think people's actions are also important. Still I will give you a delta because this was a good attempt to address the point.
I think a point is being missed. Trump is an obvious sociopath. We may judge him by the standards of common decency but the observation isn't surprising given his established pattern of behavior.
What's far more disturbing is the reaction of so many of his followers. People were threatened with termination, incarceration and worse for not shedding a tear over Kirk, a man who had not only defended, but advocated and celebrated the kind of violence he fell victim to and pointing any of that out was vilified by followers of his cult of personality.
So for conservatives there are two different sets of rules depending on who's being assaulted or murdered or insufficiently mourned.
"Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."
~ Frank Wilhoit
Whenever I wonder why a conservative says or does something, I just repeat this to myself and have the answer.
American Heritage Dictionary definition of “hypocrisy”:
So yes, hypocrisy does apply to statements, too. You might say I’m being needlessly pedantic, and I wouldn’t disagree, but if I am, I don’t think it’s worth arguing the differences too much.
Hey if you can't be pedantic here, what else is it for lol
Statements can be spoken from sincerely held belief or not, and knowingly so or not, and I Am Not A Psychiatric Expert, but I'm thinking Trump's mental landscape's roads between beliefs, statements, and behaviors are so... uh... different, that calling him hypocritical is a bit more traversl than for the garden variety maniac. To be clear, I don't see Trump's lack of hypocrisy as a defence, per se.
For an average person, hypocrisy is easier to identify in a contradiction between their stated beliefs and actual behavior, because the average person has a degree of presumption that we can trust they're acting on some shared rational values (even people we vehemently oppose, but are not in power over us).
Just for pedantic funsies because the wording of this definition didn’t match with what I think of when I think of hypocrisy.
From the Britannica Dictionary: the behavior of people who do things that they tell other people not to do; behavior that does not agree with what someone claims to believe or feel
From Merriam-Webster: a feigning to be what one is not or to believe what one does not; behavior that contradicts what one claims to believe or feel
From Oxford Languages: the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one's own behavior does not conform; pretense.
These definitions align more with what I think of when I think of hypocrisy and I think it’s bc in my mind it’s the clash of actions/behaviors and stated beliefs that is the heart of it. It’s not holding yourself to the same standard to which you hold others (though I didn’t find a definition that included this specifically).
Anyway, being a hypocrite is not an effective label to stick to conservatives. Like in this case, they don't see Kirk and Reiner as equivalent events, so telling them they're hypocrites for reacting one way to one event and another to the other is an argument that doesn't land. It's also why the mainstream argument of "imagine if the other side did it" has no weight to a conservative, the standards are explicitely not the same.
No. Just no.
Like even if from a purely logical analytical perspective this is morally bankrupt because it's still providing an excuse. Eventually, there must some effing line in the sand. And yes I'd argue still hypocritical. He understood it as a political opportunity in the same way Kirk was and he didn't practice the same standard = hypocrisy. Only you interject by going "except for these excuses, yeah consistency doesn't make it hypocrisy." Righhhtttt.
!delta because this raises the point this is a move with precedent in Trump's playbook
Honestly a question I never get answered is "Why aren't you holding yourself to higher standards than the people you claim to be superior to?"
Like if Trump is a piece of shit and you do the same things Trump does, you're a piece of shit too. That's not hypocrisy.
There's a reason he is the way he is. The things he does give him an advantage in politics, if you let him just do his things while saying he's a very bad boy you are going to lose.
Every Democrat would want a return to normalcy and decorum, as long as the Republic party is the way it is we cannot have that. It's tit for tat, if you go as hard against your republican acquaintances as they go you will notice that they will eventually stop themselves and be more normal. They're not stupid they know what they're doing and why it works.
Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/NoGood0ption (1∆).
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To be hypocritical you have to be violating a personal principle you previously advocated. Trump’s principle is that he attacks those who have attacked him and his Reiner tweet is perfectly consistent with that.
Trump criticizing Kirk haters is him pointing out a moral failure of leftists who purport to be moral. Trump never made such a claim about himself.
Outside of the context of Kirk's murder I would probably agree with you. But Trump did seem to engage with the idea that those who were mocking Kirk's death or that he claimed we're doing so were morally repugnant and the implication would therefore be that he believed that doing so was repugnant (even though as many have pointed out there is evidence to the contrary as such). It's a fair argument that was probably a disingenuous statement but nevertheless it was stated. So therefore him engaging in that sort of behavior regarding the Reiners murder is hypocritical even by your definition.
Here’s a different angle: Trump criticized those who celebrated Kirk’s death, but he did not celebrate Reiner’s death. What Trump did was blame Reiner for his own death by attributing it to Trump Derangement Syndrome. That is different.
There are people who blamed Kirk for his own death but Trump has not criticized those people. That’s what would be required to make Trump’s Reiner comment to be hypocritical.
He did not directly state that fair enough, and I will concur he is not celebrating the Reiner's death. The implication though was that anybody that said anything negative about Charlie Kirk in the wake of his death was bad, as evidenced by his reaction to Jimmy Kimmel's statement. So I think it's a fair argument you can lump people that blamed Charlie Kirk's death on himself in that group.
Define "celebrate". Many of the people who were punished didn't celebrate at all. They just pointed out the hateful things CK said and weren't sufficiently sad enough for the right.
I would agree with this in that I actually don't think Trump is being particularly hypocritical, rather his followers are. He is still being a little hypocritical though. Words matter - you can't just wave them away and say that "well but he still has the same principles regardless of what he says" - all that tells you is that he is consistently hypocritical because his principles allow for constant hypocrisy, it doesn't eliminate the hypocrisy.
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Just because Trump is wrong, does not make any other actions right.
It is always wrong to mock people in death unless it’s a Darwin Award lol.
But seriously, there really aren’t that many real people celebrating reiners death. I didn’t like any of his work, but RIP to the dude. But LOTS of people celebrated and are still celebrating the death of Kirk because they view any conservative death as positive.
I’m more concerned about the fallout from Kirk’s death than reiners, and as a conservative I do condemn trumps remarks about his murder. It’s tasteless and crass at the minimum.
That was never the point of the argument. The point of the argument was whether it was hypocritical or not considering the context around it. You're arguing that you don't think his statement is as big a deal as what some folks said about Charlie Kirk. A fair take I suppose but not what I was addressing.
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I think we’re addressing the fact that the left is held accountable for every fringe member that supports their party as you can see by the reaction to the Charlie Kirk shooting even though their were zero prominent democrats who did anything other than denounce the shooting of Charlie.
Meanwhile the face of the Republican Party is making statements like this when someone is murdered and legitimizes the violence.
True. But only one side is being lead by the people legitimizing this violence. You see only condemnation and prayers from Democratic leadership. Yes a few nutbars on social media, but nobody elected tried to legitimize Kirk's murder. Biden or Obama didn't make some statement talking about how Kirk was an insane consevative on the day he was killed. Nobody would even imagine it. But with Trump, and republicans it's just "meh. Yeah he says stuff sometimes". There's no equivalence on the left.
This isn't about millions of people. It's about elected officials (the president) of the republican party VS elected dems.
Disagree. As leader of the Republican Party, arguably the largest right wing organization in the Anglosphere, Donald Trump represents and leads the views of millions of people in a very real way, legally and ideologically.
Millions of these people voted for him specifically to represent their views. That’s the core principle of representative democracy.
Taking his opinion as representative is the point of voting for him, therefore he represents their views.
And the comparison of reactions from “people who were voted to lead ideological movements” is damnable.
Sure, but there was tons of outrage and hostility and people losing their jobs and "this is why the left lost" after Charlie Kirk. The worst I've seen in response to Trump is "well I wish he wouldn't have said that"
Dems are held collectively responsible for what any random person on the internet says.
MAGA doesn't even hold Donald Trump responsible for what he says.
“Donald trump is a hypocrite”
“You can’t just lump a million folks together”
Bruh did you read?
Acting like Trump isn't a party leader whos opinions directly shape the views of the American GOP is wild.
Isn't that a dodge though? My statement was specifically about the actions of Donald Trump yesterday, and the reason I view it as hypocritical is specifically because of reaction about that one action. Pointing out your very true statement doesn't make it not so
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You’ve intentionally misread the question.
Trump is one person his logic should be consistent
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Sorry to hear you found my post confusing.
I am specifically aiming this at Trump for his specific actions. I am saying the hypocrisy is particularly egregious in light of his and many others reaction to others reaction to Charlie Kirk's murder.
How does this, in any way, challenge the OP's assertion as per rule 6?
So let me try to make an argument for why there's an actual difference between the Reiners and Charlie Kirk. Yes, Trump's comment was distasteful, but Kimmel's were close to outright incitement of political violence.
Donald Trump's criticism of the Reiners basically amounted to "I didn't like them, and they spread defamatory lies [Russiagate] about me." The Reiners were murdered by their son.
Jimmy Kimmel's temporary cancelling was not because he said "I didn't like Charlie Kirk" - it was for saying "Charlie Kirk deserved to be killed, and he was killed by a MAGAt." Kimmel reflexively blamed the right wing - who by and large consisted of Kirk's fans, for the murder. A murder that was, unlike the case of the Reiners, a very public political assassination. And Kimmel was part of a much larger group of people on the left that celebrated that assassination. Being the figurehead, the public face of that group made him into the scapegoat.
It's less about saying something distasteful about someone being murdered, it's more about how people refused to condemn, or in some cases outright supported, political assassination.
NEVER at any point did Kimmel say anything even remotely approaching this. Give me a quote and a source, please. Quite the opposite, Kimmel called the killing senseless. You can argue that Kimmel jumped the gun on ascribing a motive, and that’s fair. But saying that he said Kirk deserved to be killed is an outright lie.
And as far as Kimmel ascribing a political motive to the killer prematurely, that’s the EXACT same thing Trump is guilty of with the Reiners, except that Trump’s version is much dumber and more egregious, because it was already known that Reiner was killed by his drug addict son. At least in the Kirk case, there was ambiguity (the killer’s family were all MAGA and Kimmel made a possibly incorrect assumption that the killer was as well). In the Reiner case, Trump tried to interject himself and politics into what is CLEARLY a sensitive and personal family matter. Also, Kimmel was RESPONDING to Trump and MAGA politicizing the Kirk killing, and his satire was about the MAGA response, not the actual murder. Trump, in contrast, did exactly what you’re talking about: politicized a killing that had nothing to do with politics, and more or less said that Reiner deserved to die because he dared to oppose Trump.
One thing you’re failing to do is provide evidence where Kimmel said Kirk deserved to be killed, which didn’t happen. Nor was there anything that could be remotely interpreted as inciting or advocating for political violence. In fact, he condemned the celebration of Kirk’s murder
This isn’t simply false or a misunderstanding, your comment is an outright lie.
Here is what Kimmel said following the assassination & prior to the cancellation pertaining to Kirk:
Opening monologue on the day after:
The following Monday (9/15)
[Cut to video interview between a reporter and Trump]
[Cut back to Kimmel]
Kimmel explicitly condemned advocating or celebrating the murder, and never attempted to justify it.
Now for the full Trump post:
The text in bold is a clear and explicit attempt to justify the murder.
Kimmel didn't say that he deserved to be killed at all. I think what he said was distasteful but it in no way amounted to saying that at all. What he said was Republicans were trying to deflect blame for the shooting to anybody but them because there were rumors he was pro-MAGA. I thought that was wrong at the time because nobody knew for certain what the motivation was for the shooting and he deserved to be disciplined as such but that to me was and is a huge stretch to say he was celebrating it.
I also said in my statement, a lot of people condemned as celebrating Charlie Kirk's murder in fact simply criticized him. There's an argument that probably wasn't done in the most tasteful fashion in many cases, but that isn't the same thing as celebrating someone being murdered. And like I said, speaking ill of the dead I think in general is a bad practice but by that logic you can't make an argument that Trump hasn't demolished that moral high ground they were standing on.
C'mon man, you are so obviously sane washing what was said and you know it. It wasn't "I didn't like them and they were defamatory about me," it was "they were murdered because they literally drove other people so crazy with their criticism of me that it resulted in them being killed. Go maga rah rah rah!" Which is a completely bizarre and unhinged way to somehow make someone else's murder all about you.
He could have just said nothing.
"He could have just said nothing."
This goes against every brittle thought in his drug addled brain hes ever had. His entire life has been about HIM HIM HIM.
Kimmel literally never said Charlie Kirk deserved to be killed.
He just said that MAGA was desperately trying to foist the blame elsewhere.
He never made a moral judgement.
> Donald Trump's criticism of the Reiners basically amounted to "I didn't like them, and they spread defamatory lies [Russiagate] about me." The Reiners were murdered by their son.
Let's look at what Donald Trump actually said.
"Rob Reiner, a tortured and struggling, but once talented movie director and star, has passed away, along with his wife , Michelle, reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable infliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME." "He was known to drive people CRAZY by his raging obsession of Donald J. Trump"
President Trump said Reiner "passed away" "due to the anger he caused others".
His position wasn't merely that he disliked what Reiner had to say about him. He said that Reiner's views were the cause of Reiner's death. That Rob Reiner's positions on Trump drove Nick Reiner crazy and were the cause of Nick's actions. He assigned responsibility for Rob Reiner's death to Rob Reiner, not Nick Reiner.
You might feel that criticism of Rob Reiner's criticism of Trump is merited. But, Trump's statement didn't merely amount to "I don't like them". Trump's statement was far worse than that.
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Here is Kinmel’s monologue about Charlie Kirk. Where does Kimmel say “Charlie Kirk deserved to be killed” as you are claiming? Where does Kimmel support political assassination as you are claiming? Please answer this or kindly retract your statement.
u/Morthra Which part of this quote implies anything you said?
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You seem to need to misrepresent some of the basic facts to do it.
You are lying. This never happened. If anything, Trump's statement is closer to saying that Reiner deserved to die for having "TDS" than anything Kimmel said about Kirk.
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Kimmel never said Kirk deserved to die, nor did he even blame MAGA. He (rightfully) called out how MAGA, as insane and stupid as they are, tried to label the Kirk shooter as anything but MAGA before we even knew what happened.
Further, no left wing leaders were condoning what happened to Kirk - they were day 1 hour 1 minute 1 condeming what happened, yet when a similar tragedy has happened Trump and the crazy fucks in his party don't even care or will make fun of the situation when it happens to the other side.
And, before you begin again, Twitter and TikTok randos =/= REPUBLICAN LEADERS
That was a bad job of steelmanning both quotes. Trump wrote Reiner was murdered BECAUSE of talking shit about Trump…
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Here is how the NY Post characterized Kimmel's comments on Trump and Charlie Kirk. At no point did he say that Kirk deserved to be killed. He didn't say it was MAGA, but he did mock the right for making claims about Kirks killer before anyone knew who it was. Remember that Tyler Robinson was arrested after (10PM mdt) Kimmel's show was taped (4:30 pdt\5:30 mdt).
Kimmel wasn't blaming anyone- he was mocking Trump and the right wing talking heads who were making claims without knowing anything.
Kimmel said nothing even close to what you are saying. At all.
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Dude, you should edit this. Putting something in quotes means the referenced person actually said that thing verbatim. Kimmel didn't say anything approaching what is in that quote.
Can you provide a link to that Kimmel quote? When I search for that online, I can't find it (and when I read the quote that ABC supposedly took him off the air for, it contains nothing like that).
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This is just a fabrication. Kimmel said nothing of the sort.
You're outright lying about what Kimmel said.
We have to be honest in conversations like these.
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Narrow challenge -
This isn't a context-free event. People celebrated the death of Bin Laden - was that disgusting? Perhaps. What if someone had killed Hitler? Would celebrating that have been disgusting?
In fact, much like Kirk, both those men, as far as I know, committed no personal violence, and were instigators writ large. Obviously the scale and power imbalance was enormously different, but my point is that I have never met anyone who was actually 100% non-violent in all possible scenarios. Which reframes the discussion to context, which might very well be a slam dunk, but you do have to engage with it at that level.
I'm not a member of the communities Kirk platformed violence against, so IMO I don't have the right to judge them for their feelings in the aftermath of the shooting.
I disagree because the underpinning of why I say it was hypocritical was because Trump and his administration embraced the idea that it was awful to criticize Charlie Kirk after he died. While he was absolutely correct in calling out people that celebrated his death he also took advantage of that to attempt to intimidate his opponents into silence by essentially making it risky to call out anything wrong Charlie Kirk might have said or done. And as I've stated before many times I don't necessarily think that everyone who engaged in the latter did so in a way that was tasteful but that's not the same thing as celebrating someone's death.
I think what you're trying to argue is that there was a power dynamic between the two that made the events unequal in scale and that nobody who engages in politics gets it right every time. That is objectively true but it's not what I'm getting at. What I'm getting at is that Trump seem to embrace the idea (and as others have stated it was probably facetiously so) that it is ill to speak of the dead for political reasons and worse to do so when a person is murdered for their political beliefs, then went and spoke of the Reiner's murder and implied that politics were the reason why they were murdered, when there was no evidence for that whatsoever (at least not at the time of this writing). In my mind that means all the backlash against Charlie Kirk's death from him and his administration was shallow at best and that it is enormously hypocritical
People celebrating Charlie kirks murder were silenced because we dont need that kind of psychotic behavior in a first world country. Allowing people to celebrate it pushes forward this idea that if someone says something that you dont like to any degree you have the right to kill them. Furthermore, people getting wrapped up in politics get to kill their political opponents in an attempt to either make people afraid to vote against their ideals or inevitably make their ideals seem more popular because if we just kill everyone we think is mean, then we will always win.
The majority of people I saw being condemned as celebrating Kirk's death weren't. They were making commentary and criticism of his politics. Now, I can agree in a lot of cases this was done in a distasteful fashion but it's a big stretch to me to say that's the same thing as celebrating his death (anyone who said 'oh goodie he's dead kill em all" or something like that obviously deserved whatever consequences came to them).
More to the point what does that have to do with my argument?
Well, even if it's framed as "oh good now we have less 'racism'" thats still a celebration of eliminating someone who doesnt have the same viewpoint as you do.
Its even worse when you consider definitions like 'nazi' and 'racism' are so wildly blown out of proportion today just to make people look at you differently, killing someone just because you think they're saying something racist is a bad thing.
I would consider that sort of statement a celebration of his death. I'm talking about people that may have said something along the lines of "Charlie Kirk did and said some horrible things but didn't deserve to die the way he did". Would you consider that a celebration of his death?
Of course not, but I dont think i ever saw anything along those lines banned. Of course, its not like it didnt happen but people who were genuine with their statements I think were significantly less likely to get banned.
And honestly, im ok with anything that even seemed disingenuous getting banned, because things are just out of hand. We should change people's minds with civil discussions and votes, not phantasizing about what we think the definition of racism is and then blowing someone's head off because some dude on the internet said some else is racist for having a different viewpoint.
But that's my point. If you lump all people in who made such statements with those that made far more outrageous statements, youre inherently chilling the conversation and making it far less likely for any civil discourse to happen. Not to mention, if the whole point was we shouldn't turn horrific deaths into political talking points Trump was an absolute hypocrite.
Unless it's coming from Trump because then you love that sort of thing.
What Trump said about Reiner is far worse than what you cancelled Jimmy Kimmel for, yet the worst Trump is getting out of it is a few days of furrowed brows.
The criticism was the majority of leftist extremists celebrated an assassination. This wasn’t an assassination and he wasn’t celebrating it as a good thing to do.
So his statement implied that the Reiners died because of Rob's political beliefs. He knew that likely wasnt the case and chose to mock it for his own political gains. The circumstances between the two cases are different, fair enough, but that doesn't mean he isn't being a hypocrite.
I call bullshit on that. I don't believe anyone has a genuine principled belief that if someone whose politics you dislike is murdered, publicly jeering about it is fine and cool, but if they're murdered by an assassin, joking about their politics is a horrible and disgusting thing to do.
That's just quite plainly an after-the-fact reverse engineered rule which makes it alright to ignore Trump. It's searching for the minute differences between the situations and then drawing the line precisely between them.
Who celebrated it? Other than Twitter trolls. Show me one comment made by a mainstream democrat celebrating is death? Find me one!
Celebrated? I saw it sucks and it wasn't warranted, but I'm not going to pretend he wasn't a bigot.
Is that celebration? No one said he deserved to be murdered, if they did it was fringe and not as high profile as the president.
The majority of the left celebrated Kirk's assassination?
Who? Give me a name.
They’re both murders. That’s what you call a distinction without a difference.
The idea that a random strawman represents “the left” but the right wing president doesn’t represent the right is comically hypocritical.
Is Donald Trump a rightwing extremist? Or is he, by virtue of the fact that he was elected by a majority of voters, representative of the mainline thought of the Republican Party?
Are the majority of the leftist extremists in the room with us?
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Not only though. I've been intrigued that this has triggered backlash even on the right. I was browsing the conservative Reddit page last night and the majority of people found this distasteful. That's partly why I posted this because I was curious as the gauge what people here thought and wanted to see if anybody could give an argument as to why what I felt wasn't the case.
I will say though is I have consistently stated, the number of people that actively cheered Kirk being murdered was not large. Most of the backlash I saw online were about people critiquing him for things that he said or did in life in the light of his death. It is absolutely a fair argument that that was often not done in a tasteful fashion but that is far from the same thing as celebrating his death.
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So are we admitting that the Charlie Kirk reactions in question were out of line/in poor taste/immoral? If not, I don't know why there would be criticism of Trump for the same. You can't argue for months that it's just free speech and people should let it go and then cry foul when the shoe is on the other foot.
> are we admitting that the Charlie Kirk reactions in question were out of line/in poor taste/immoral
some of them, yes.
In the wake of Charlie Kirk's death, there were a lot of different kinds of comments that were critical of him.
some alluded to theories that his murderer was on the right. Some people, both on the right and left, modified photos of the shooter falsely claim he wore a shirt supporting Trump or Harris in 2024. Some on the left falsely claimed he was a Groyper. Kimmel claimed that MAGA supporters want to pretend that the shooter wasn't "one of their own".
Other criticisms were made that I would describe as arguing over Kirk's legacy. Some on the right claimed that he should be viewed as a great example of someone engaging in dialog with those he disagreed with and opposing political violence. Some on the left pointed to some of his comments that they argued alluded to violence.
and there were some comments that were just nasty. People criticizing Kirk's wife, claiming that she was lusting after VP Vance now.
I think comments of types 3 were awful in reference to Kirk. I think comments of type 1 in reference to Kirk should be condemned, too. I think Trump's comments on Monday are similar to 1 and 3.
I think comments arguing over how someone should be viewed after their death when they are a public figure, is reasonable. I can see why some people will find it distasteful. But, when a controversial figure is put on a pedestal, there is going to be some pushback, and some people are going drag out the worst things that person said in response to dispute that legacy.
Trump's comments claimed that Rob Reiner was responsible for his own death. Trump claimed that Reiner drove people crazy with his criticism of Trump (and implied Nick was one of them and that this was the cause of Rob Reiner's murder). That's really bad.
? The hypocrisy comes from the fact the right kept condemning and even throwing consequences to anyone that seemingly slighted them.
But when its you all there shouldn't be consequences?
If you're talking about people who would go out and say things like "Kirk deserved what he got" then yes. I never had an issue admitting that was gross and whoever said something like that deserved whatever consequences they faced.
But if we're talking people who made legitimate criticisms of him in the light of his death for things that he did or said, then no. I can absolutely agree that some people did not do that in a way that was tasteful and they deserve to be called out as such but that is not the same thing as somebody celebrating his death. I don't think anybody had a problem with that either.
Either way my point is that Trump making this kind of statement in light of saying that such mocking statements of Charlie Kirk were deeply amoral is hypocritical.
Some were in poor taste, but they also aren't the president of the "United" States of America. People were punished just for quoting CK. I don't give a shit what random Redditors are saying or celebrating. It's different when it's people who are supposed to represent us.
People weren’t getting in trouble for critiquing Charlie Kirk.
They were getting fired for celebrating and mocking his death.
This is simply not true. Many of the people getting fired were not "celebrating his death", but suggesting that although his death was a tragedy, we don't need to venerate him as a fantastic person or put him on a coin just because of the unfortunate nature of his death.
They tried to bury Jimmy Kimmel for saying Trump wasn't making genuine attempts to bring peace to the country.
At least one news anchor was canned for pointing out Charlie Kirk had a history of discussing divisive topics even though they acknowledged his death was unacceptable and tragic.
IDK why people all of a sudden have amnesia as to what happened in the wake of Charlie Kirk's assassination, it's pretty trivial to verify.
Not true. A lot of the stuff on Libs of Tik Tok were people expressing criticism of Kirk. Again there is an argument that it often wasn't done tastefully and that deserved to be called out but that isn't the same thing as celebrating someone's death.
“But whatever moral high ground they had has been destroyed by Donald Trump's statement.”
Who is the “they”?
If the “they” is Republicans or the right, they had zero moral high ground to begin with.
To compare, it would have to be president Obama in power saying some real shit about Kirk the day he died in the most classless way possible, multiple times in multiple ways. . Random internet fuckwits celebrating Kirk’s death doesn’t even remotely compare.
A political assassination as an attempt to silence opinions you disagree with, and a familial argument ending in murder, are two completely different scenarios. While what Trump said was insensitive and stupid, Reiner's death wasn't an attempt to erode the freedoms or safety of the American public.
Trump claimed Reiner's murder was a political assassination:
Notice that Trump doesn't claim that Reiner died of a disease. He claims that both Reiner and his wife died as a consequence of the anger his disease caused others. That disease was public opposition to Trump. So Trump here is claiming that Reiner and his wife were killed because his public opposition to Trump made people very angry, so angry that they chose to kill him to stop him from publicly opposing Trump. That's a political assassination according to your understanding.
According to Trump, then, the scenarios are not completely different.
There’s no evidence of hat Kirk’s was either. Just a whack of right wing nonsense and grandstanding. I find that take laughable.
No but how many times did Trump condemn people for mocking Kirk's death? The circumstances to me are irrelevant, he still mocked a death in a manner he would have condemned if it had been directed at Charlie Kirk (rightfully so I might add).
Okay, so if you just say "every argument you bring is irrelevant to me", is this post just you trying to grandstand? Because it seems like you don't want to see why these situations are different. It's much, much easier to just say that Trump's comments were gross and insensitive; no need to try to make the Kirk connection, then completely disregard every reason people claim they're different.
The whole uproar was that the left celebrated violence. Now here’s trump politicizing a violent death, making the couples death about himself, and basically saying the guy deserved it.
OP is bringing up a concept to discuss, if you bring up a tangential topic, he is in his right to say "thats not what im talking about right now."
I agree with OP, you can't cry about reaction to Kirk and then go and do the same thing you cried about when its a political adversary
Guy, you don’t have to like that OP disagrees with you but disagreeing with you is hardly grandstanding. MAGA trying to turn Kirk into a martyr on the other hand …
OP is sticking to the statement in their post - that Trump's reaction to Reiner's murder is hypocritical, given his previous criticism of reactions to Kirk's murder by Jimmy Kimmel and others.
Your response was irrelevant. Do you have anything to say to address OP's original statement?
I said that this is a bad argument because it doesn't fundamentally address the issue of the behavior at hand. If my argument was that his behavior was equally as harmful as people who the right condemned after Kirk died, that would be a relevant point. It isn't it's that this is an example of hypocrisy from him because if someone has said this sort of statement about Kirk after he died he would express outrage.
So... hypocrisy is claiming a moral virtue that you do not possess. It's a subset of lying.
Maybe this is just a semantic argument, but people misuse "hypocrisy" all the time, and it's kind of annoying.
You've made plenty of good arguments that Trump's statements were outrageous and offensive, but you have not pointed to a statement he made claiming some moral virtue, especially not one about him not mocking... well, anyone.
Trump is a hypocrite in many ways, such as making claims to be the president of law and order, then pardoning many obvious criminals, or being against excessive executive orders then using them himself.
But in this particular instance? I can find no examples of Trump claiming not to mock political rivals, nor even that he himself would not mock someone's death. In fact, he's done it often.
Simply behaving inconsistently in different situations is not hypocritical.
TL;DR: What virtue are you saying he has claimed that his statement about Reiner belies?
I think I very clearly laid this out in my argument but will clarify nevertheless. The moral crux of the backlash from Trump and others regarding Charlie Kirk's death was that it is wrong to speak of the dead, especially in the circumstances in which he died. I realize that nobody explicitly said that and it could be argued it was misused to try and silence people for expressing contrarian opinions on Charlie Kirk (and as many have said arguing morality regarding the Trump administration is a difficult task) but nevertheless that was the moral underpinning to their argument. Therefore I find it ridiculously hypocritical of trump to then go on and say something disgusting about the Reiner's murder. It is a fair point to say that he is done similar things before but not within the context of having engaged in a public backlash against those that expressed contrarian opinions regarding Charlie Kirk. That is to me what makes it different from other times he has done this.
That's really not what people were saying. They were talking about glorifying political violence, almost exclusively.
But even if that were true: other people saying it's wrong to speak ill of the dead, and then Trump (frequently) speaking ill of the dead is not "hypocrisy" in any way.
Hypocrisy is intrinsically personal. It's never hypocritical for person A to say they are virtuous because they don't do X, and then person B doing X. It just doesn't work that way at all.
So... even accepting your interpretation that it's just speaking ill of the dead where is a quote from Trump saying it's wrong to speak ill of the dead, and even moreso that he holds that virtue?
Because, again, "hypocrisy" is lying about your virtues, not simply acting inconsistent, and especially not being inconsistent with other people's outrage.
You know what this is actually a fair point. I would counter that that's not how most people use the term hypocrisy though in colloquial conversation but you are correct that that is it's strict definition. I'll give you a Delta on that for principle.
Let me ask though do you not disagree that it is grossly inconsistent for Trump to raise a stink against those "advocating for political violence" when that seemed to widely be interpreted as saying anything negative about Charlie Kirk and then engaging in such a ridiculous statement regarding the Reiner family?
I'm not quite sure what you're asking about here, but...
Even if Trump ever claimed that saying anything negative about Kirk (who, BTW, actually was killed as an act of political violence) was encouraging political violence, that seems like a very different act than dissing an actor that was killed by his son for personal reasons.
But I'm not sure I've ever seen Trump actually say that. Do you have a source?
Even if he did say that negative comments about an assassinated person was encouraging assassination... has Trump ever claimed that he has the virtue that he doesn't encourage political violence?
I'll certainly agree that Trump is frequently inconsistent. About... practically everything. Consistency has never been something he's ever really claimed or exhibited.
In fact, he goes out of his way to say how his inconsistent and incoherent rants are an intentional political strategy called his "weave". This, I believe, is actual hypocrisy, because I don't believe for a second this is always strategic, even if sometimes it might be. That's just a lie about his political acumen.
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Republicans and their media are essentially arguing that leftists created the environment for this to flourish.
Like most things. They "Whatabout" out of it.
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Trump’s tweet was bad taste. The left openly celebrated with glee.
Not true because nobody in any serious office that leans left (IE elected Democrats) said anything that celebrated his death. Regular people did to an extent I'll give you that, but most of what I saw was people simply criticizing his legacy in an often tasteless way. That latter point I concur deserve to be called out but I don't think that's the same thing as celebrating someone's death.
This does not negate in my mind that it was a hypocritical action by Trump to condemn Charlie Kirk's murder and those who implied he deserved it or things of that nature and then turn around and say what he said about the Reiners.
Hypocritical is the least of the problems with his statement. It is psychopathic. The level of narcissism involved, to claim someone else’s murder is because they hated you, has rarely been seen in public. It is also claiming terrorist responsibility to state it was done to silence political speech against him.
Okay, while I believe I agree with you for the most part, let me lay out my argument(s).
I believe you are correct about the reaction to Kirk and I would like to think most of the general sentiment that mocking him and bolstering the idea that it was a "good thing" that he died is/was a problem.
I don't agree with how Trump reacted to their deaths.
So here is my "change your view" statement: Trump's reaction/comments about the Reiners comes across to me as someone who has long been slighted by a family member and made an extremely poor choice in expressing how he felt about their passing. (Something like: "he hated me, and I hated him" but with even worse expression)
And while that sentiment feels the same as many people's reaction to Kirk, the reason and expression is a bit different.
The most obvious is the political angle. Kirk was killed for political reasons, and to current public knowledge, the Reiners were not. (And it is something you did address in your edit)
The second is a personal one. Kirk is someone Trump liked, and the Reiners weren't. While still in incredibly bad taste, his reaction isn't "hypocrisy" on this alone.
Finally, i think there is the social (perception) level of the argument. And what I would consider sider the old adage "don't talk ill of the dead" and here I feel Trump has utterly fallen short. Speak what you will with your close acquaintances about your feelings on someone. But blasting out and trying to get a "last word" on some argument that will never have a conclusion is entirely within the realm of hypocrisy in my view.
So, to conclude. I don't believe that Trump is a hypocrite for holding or confiding these sentiments. But that he is a hypocrite for trying to use the moment to "win an argument" with a dead man. Which I believe both views are slightly different from your expressed CMV.
I've seen variations of this argument here, being that Trump didn't actually hold any convictions about Charlie's murder and the backlash against it and therefore he couldn't be hypocritical because he had no genuine feelings that the backlash against it was bad. That very well may be true, but it doesn't mean he wasn't publicly proclaiming as such. That to me is why I condemn it as hypocrisy because while he may be expressing his true feelings on the Reiner's murder, that doesn't change what he publicly stated about Charlie's death. And that is clearly in direct contrast and ergo hypocritical (and changes nothing about it being gross regardless). This is a very well laid out argument, and I would concur with some of your points, I just think it misses why I think it's hypocritical of him to do so.
Rob Reiner was a fat pig slaughtered by his own son, only God knows what they did to that boy. Charlie was murdered for his views by a Furry who was ashamed he liked the cock…
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Political leaders on the left condemned Kirk's death to a man. Show me any leaders on the left who said anything other than it was wrong. The only people saying he got what was coming to him were random people online. Kirk was also killed because of his political expressions.
Contrast that to a) a celebrity who was murdered by a family member for no political reason and b) comments made by the president, the most senior political leader in the world/country.
Apples and oranges.
I don't know if it's quite "apples and oranges" as the behaviors are exactly the same, but I DO agree that I find it far worse for a sitting president to be saying these things than some random internet assholes. I also noticed that the Democrat officials at least had the decency to express condolences and condemn murder as a viable option for people you disagree with.
I saw several Republican congressman and politicians paying respect to Mr. Reiner online yesterday and thought that was nice too. The only one really acting like a disgusting hater was the president himself and I found that absolutely sickening.
What's even worse is that it wasn't a political death so he wasn't obligated or expected to make ANY statement on it. If he wasn't sorry, he didn't need to pretend he is; all he had to do was SHUT HIS MOUTH and keep his feelings to himself while others are grieving... and he couldn't even do that.
I think he harmed himself yesterday. People are disgusted, even his own party. There won't be any immediate fallout because realistically there really isn't anything legally you can do but he's lost a level of support... this won't help him with anyone down the line.
I wonder why it's this that seems to have turned some heads, and not Trump's almost identical way of talking about the attack on Paul Pelosi. Maybe because Pelosi survived?
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It's upsetting to see how often anti-trump people, critics of republicans, liberals, and Democrats, etc. all think that somehow pointing out the hypocrisy of people on the right is some kind of dunk on them.
It's not.
For them, hypocrisy is a power move, and just another tactic in a war. The idea that somehow they're beholden to the truth is false, and being able to lie and act contrary to one's words and actions one day, and then differently another, is just no less legitimate then bringing a gun to a knife fight, in their eyes. For them, "All is fair in Love and War" and the only rule is to win, so even giving the impression that you care about truth when you don't it's just another tactic, among others.
This is standard authoritarian playbook, fascist tactic rules. There's nothing new about this, so good job pointing it out.
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Were. That ship sailed long ago where it comes to Trump. Now it’s just seeing where it ends and he keeps inventing new bars to go under.
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There isn’t a large vocal group of Republicans backing Trump on this. You don’t see countless people celebrating it. Trump himself is being a dumbass like he has countless times before.
That is true, but I don't think that necessarily means his actions aren't hypocritical
It’s not hypocritical. It’s 100% on brand. If by that we mean the entire party is unserious and full of hypocrites then sure.
When the hell has he ever had moral high ground to stand on
Was it when he was sued(and lost) for racial discrimination at an apartment building? Was it when he lied about some black men raping a woman then continuing to slander them years later AFTER they were exonerated? Was it when he cheated on all of his wives, including once while they were either pregnant/had a newborn(can’t remember which it doesn’t matter), was it when he sexually assaulted any one of the many many women who claim such, was it one of the many times he likely raped a child, was it when he stole money from a charity, was it when he had a fake university, was it when he mocked a handicapped person, or mocked veterans and prisoners of war, or was it when he talked about Arnold Palmers hog, or when he used campaign funds to pay a porn star for sex then tried to cover it up, was it when he incited an attempted halt of a democratic process wherein his followers chanted to hang his own vice president, was it when he violently forced protesters off the streets to he could have a photo op with a bible, was it when he allowed an immigrant to flippantly fire federal employees on whim under the guise of “efficiency”, was it when he gave 40 billion tax dollars to a foreign nation where his disgraced and pathetic friend has escaped to, I’m fucking out of breath.
Shouldn't everybody be outraged when someone gets murdered regardless of politics? Reddit is strange.
Would you not have a deep anger for a person who was so vocal in trying to get you impeached, undermined your electoral victory, have you imprisoned? It wasn’t just difference of opinion or “mean words” out of context. There is plenty of evidence. He did an interview with ex cia director John Brennan and they spouted lies. He wasn’t elected to be kind. He was elected to fix things and our country.
I laughed when I heard that scumbag Reiner was dead, no more having to listen to his stage 5 TDS ramblings against President Trump and his supporters
And yet I bet you thought everyone who said anything vaguely negative about Charlie Kirk deserved to lose their job if not worse. You're a hypocrite and vile.
Trump isn’t just any Republican. He’s the leader of the Republican Party and the president.
The leader of the Democrat party at the time, Biden, Schumer, or Harris depending on how you look at it, all expressed condolences to Kirk and his family and did not say anything inflammatory.
But all of that is a red herring.
Charlie Kirk was a right wing political advocate, who built his entire career on exactly that. Rob Reiner is a random guy who makes movies.
But then you could say it's in line with the bar set by those who mocked Charlie Kirk's death. We're living in a world after that event, with the new set of rules in terms of propriety and respect. Here Trump is behaving according to this new world. It would be absurd to demand he behaved in a different manner, since society doesn't deem it distasteful to mock your rivals' deaths anymore.
This is an absolute race to the bottom that pretends like no political potshots were taken before Charlie Kirk's assassination.
I can just as easily say the commentary made at the murder of the Hortman's set the stage for Charlie Kirk comments and everyone who mocked him was just behaving in line with this "new world"
And then we could start going back and forth on grievances till it becomes wholly unclear who started what.
It's a false premise and besides that; none of those examples compare when you remember you're talking about the seated president of the united states of America making these comments to the world before there was even any news about what happened as if social media trolls are the same thing.
kirk was a paid professional hate monger, reiner was a movie guy....these things are not the same.
Imagine the blowback from trump and his supporters on this:
"A very sad thing happened last night in Utah. Charlie Kirk, a tortured and struggling, but once very talented speaker, has passed away, reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as LIBERAL DERANGEMENT SYNDROME, sometimes referred to as LDS”
Do we know that Reiners was politically assassinated?
Maybe I’m missing something, or it was edited, but does/did the OP say it was a political assassination? All I see is “you cannot turn around and do it (say anything distasteful about someone being murdered) toward someone whose political views you dislike”.
We don't for certain. But even if so, isn't it still bad to use their deaths make political commentary on a murder which is what they accused so many people of doing?
I think it is very different. Political assassination is something that absolutely no one should encourage, since it might generate even more political assassination.
Speaking ill of the dead outside of the political assassination context is distasteful but does not generate this incentive problem.
Imagine that a democrat was politically assassinated and Donald Trump made the similar comments about that political murder. Would you view those comments as worse than the ones that he is making now?
We can certainly agree on your first point.
Similar comments meaning like those he said about Rob Reiner? Yes, of course I would view those as worse, but it doesn't mean what he said isn't horrible and hypocritical.
It's also potentially dangerous. I think one could infer (I don't but I think one could) from his statement the Reiners died because of their political beliefs. Which if they died of heart attacks or something would be disgusting but not necessarily harmful. Because they were murdered, the implication is those views are evil and they deserved to be murdered. I don't think that's what he intended with it, but I can see how someone might read it that way.
You see the two deaths and the commentaries after them as equal enough to say the "moral high ground has been completely destroyed". I think the key ingredient in the moral high ground is the political assassination nature of the crime. You seem to half agree that the type of crime is crucial.
Good luck with changing your view, thanks for the chat.
Yes and no. I said that outright celebrating his death was wrong no matter what. But a lot of people got lumped in with that who were criticizing his politics, but not celebrating the manner of his death. It didn't matter though, the reaction towards them in many cases was the same. And the moral underpinning of it all seemed to be that it is wrong to critique the dead. If that's the case, Trump did act hypocritically.
Trump is also the President. Those who celebrated Charlie's death had nowhere near that amount of power.
It cannot be that the moral underpinning is to critique the death. Countries are frequently at war and they celebrate the death of their enemies. No one would have been morally criticized for celebrating the death of Hitler, for example.
It has to be more to it than just celebrating the dead. My understanding is that the moral underpinning was: always clearly condemn political assassinations. The ambiguity in how people reacted to Kirk's death made some people say that they were not clear enough that political assassinations should never happen. None of these elements appear in the current situation, in my opinion.
Okay let's run with your argument. If say a Democrat was assassinated that you absolutely hated, and you posted something along the lines of "I hated that Dems politics but he didn't deserve to be assassinated. Can't say I'm sad they're gone but it's terrible what happened" would you believe that's a celebration of that Democrats death?
Me personally, I would think it is unknowable what you are doing. It could be that you actually believe the hedges or you just made them not to get in trouble. There would be people both supporting and condemning your statement but I wouldn't have strong opinions about what you were doing.
That sort of statement is what I saw many people making about Kirk's death and I saw them get doxxed or fired from their jobs because that was viewed as celebrating his death. I think that is ridiculous personally.
Trump was the one who claimed it was a political assassination.
So by your logic he is encouraging that behaviour.
Political assassination is not different at all. If anything it is harder to defend ethically the murder of innocents versus political figures who garner privilege, support harm for the sake of compromise, and so on.
The incentive problem seems to be of excusing murder of the lower castes.
Is the situation of a public figure making jokes about the assassination of someone whose politics they dislike somewhat worse than making jokes about a non-political murder of someone they dislike?
Eh, maybe slightly. I don't buy for a second that anyone thinks there's a huge difference unless they've specifically reverse engineered those moral principles in the last day in order to support the conclusion that Trump really isn't that bad, guys.
If joking about what happened to Charlie Kirk is bad enough that joking about it is something that a teacher deserves to be fired for, there's simply no justification for why something like this shouldn't be career-endingly unacceptable coming out of the mouth of the fucking president.
Would it matter in this context?
It's hypocritical if your first principles assume the Golden Rule is indeed golden, but that it is not the point of any good personality cult. Trump never claimed, nor do any of his constituents claim he has any moral high ground. Conservatives absconded that notion, somewhere between the second Bush term, the rise of the Tea Party, and the resignation of Speaker Boehner. What a decently moral person would consider a "bug," MAGA considers a "feature," because they do not assume an equal application of their espoused values. Rather, their revealed preferences show how effective it is at applying double or triple standards to exalt the group that gets the easier standards (like Kirk).
And if this sounds very scathing, it is. But consider that it's been the blink of an evolutionary eye that we weren't a fiercely tribal, violent, upright mammal. It's not moral, but it is deeply reflective of our base human instincts. It wasn't until the Enlightenment era that we saw whole of Western societies start to consider what it might be like to create a country that was founded in the tenets of equality -- that systematically avoiding hypocrisy, legal double standards, and ending up with god-kings as rulers was necessary to get there.
It shouldn't surprise us when that experiment proves tenuous, we aren't that moral, or above our limbic systems. Human history has been 99.9% violence and tribalism. And now that we've allowed technology companies, the size of nation-states, to reverse engineer from the worst aspects of our monkey brain against the worst incentives possible, it seems inevitable we will slide backwards into more Trumps, fewer Jeffersons.
I want to add some context in support of OP. Part of the hypocrisy of Trump in this instance, regardless of how far he went with his disrespect of Reiner, is that there was no pretext for him to be doing that aside from deep-diving into Reiner's beliefs.
Kirk's entire persona and career was being a right-wing influencer. It is hard to speak of Kirk without it being political. Additionally, when Kirk died, Trump and the right made a very obvious effort to politicize and capitalize on his death, spreading lots of propaganda, trying to turn him into a martyr, and using his death as a jumping off point to start a war against "Antifa" and anything associated with the left-wing. We're still seeing it now as Erika Kirk is for some reason a central point of political conversation. All of this reaction from the right to Kirk's death warranted its own reaction from others to call out Kirk for not being someone that deserved this extreme level of focus and attention. People SHOULD be pointing out Kirk's glaring flaws because, from the get-go, the right was trying to paint him as more than he was.
Reiner's death is nothing like Kirk's, regardless of whether Reiner had and expressed his own political beliefs. He was not known for that and no one was pushing Reiner as a political martyr. Not to mention that Reiner himself was respectful of Kirk when he passed: "I unfortunately saw the video of it," he said. "It's beyond belief what happened to him."...The attack "should never happen to anybody."..."I don't care what your political beliefs are. That's not acceptable. That's not a solution to solving problems."
trump, kirk, and their supporters are all the equivalent of human garbage. The faster they and those like them die off/are wiped out, the better things will be for everyone that isn't a bootlicking piece of trash.
No one on the right celebrated the murder. Can’t say the same for the left regarding Charlie kirk
Refusing to mourn or worship the guy isn’t the same as celebrating. MAGA tried to force everyone to cry as if some super kind force for good who never said anything awful was killed. And that’s his not the case at all. That’s not celebration. Some pointed out that he defended guns and said shootings were an ok price to pay. That is a little callous but the point is that Kirk was callous. Still not a celebration.
The Reiners were decent, beloved, giving people who were creators, giving society beautiful art and fighting Trumps hate filled rise to power that was based on lies and propaganda, promoted in part by Charlie Kirk who built a platform of hate and deceit by targeting college students with one liner gotcha moments and click bait bullshit racist misinformation. Comparing the two situations is total bullshit. Trump made a sarcastic mocking eulogy of two good people. People who critiqued Kirk after his (horrid) death were perfectly right to do so. Stop sanitizing someone’s hate just because they died.
Most people did not know Charlie Kirk and therefore the things they were said were needlessly hateful. Trump however has known Reiner for many years and had a dislike for him much before this started.
He didn't have to like him or even pretend to be sorry and offer condolences.
All he had to do was keep his big mouth shut and act like a sitting president, not a random troll airing his pettiness and hate online. That's not a big or unreasonable ask.
You're right. When Charlie Kirk was killed, some of Kirk's detractors said he'd brought it on himself. Trump condemned such statements. Now he's done the very same thing.
I think the president of the united states should be held to a much higher standard than some twitter user or talk show host. Do you not?
I agree. The irony is I even saw hardcore Republicans on Twitter like Catturd and some others saying "I didn't agree with his politics or how he spoke to people, but he didn't deserve this. Rest in peace." I saw almost no one being ugly about it, certainly far less than I saw being vile about Kirk. The only who really stood up and was disgusting and ugly.... the President himself. Absolutely vile.
And yes, anyone who celebrated Kirk's death but condemns Trump now is a hypocrite because they're equally vile people; if you claim to hate Trump but act just like him... look in a mirror. It's an Animal Farm ending. You're no different than him. But that doesn't make him right in any way; it just means he's not the only rotten person in the room.
I found it despicable and gross then and I find it even worse though for Trump to do it now because he's not just some dumb random person on the internet with zero self-awareness. He's a sitting president and to take time out of his day to be that petty and hateful is just disgusting. He's a horrible person.
The only people with Trump Derangement Syndrome are his MAGA followers, who think he was sent by god.
Deranged.
I would say the two events are not related and not a good example of comparison.
Fundamentally Kirk was a political figure murdered for his political statements
Reiners was a Hollywood figure murdered for personal reasons.
What Trump did was worse, he made an otherwise apolitical tragic murder, and turned it political. Thus I wouldn’t say it’s hypocritical, just deeply disgusting and a great example of his moral bankruptcy.
OF COURSE IT'S HYPOCRITICAL! I'm not even going to try to change your view here. My better question is, why do you think that matters? Trump is Trump and he's going to behave like Trump and that means he will turn every situation to being about Trump even when it's not. Why does this surprise you?
Its not even that it's a power play or deliberate move by Trump. It's just how he views the world. Someone who he liked died, and he got mad anytime someone said anything bad about that man. Someone who he did not like died, and so he said whatever bad things he damn well pleased.
Trump is incredibly consistent with only one thing in his entire life. Rules are for other people, not him. That's his one consistent world view. Why is it surprising to you that it's come up again?
You cant call one person a hypocrite based on what another person said. Your major flaw in reasoning is treating a side of the political spectrum as a single person. Hypocritical is not the correct word to use.
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I think these are two vastly different situations
Both are wrong, I am not here to defend Trump's comments at all, but there can be degrees of wrong.
People did not simply "Joke" about Kirk's murder people cheered for it. People protested vigils. People vandalized memorials. This on top of the fact that his death was a politically motivated assassination by the same larger group doing so.
A more apt comparison would be if Rob had been murdered by a Trump supporter, and Trump had tweeted something along the likes of "This is what happens when you dedicate your life to spewing hatred about our great nation ;) hopefully this is just the beginning"
That would be a very different situation
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This isnt some profound realization or anything, but something that I have come to accept is that most people just have group of people that they care about (politicial views, race, nationality, religion, etc.), and they don't actually care about anything bad happening to people outside of that group.
The people who laughed about Charlie Kirk's assassination would have been absolutely inconsolable had the victim been someone on their "team".
Trump's statements are classless and very typical of him, but Rob Reiner would have been dancing on Trump's grave had he been the victim.
I’ve known two, what I would classify, as true narcissists, and this doesn’t surprise me at all. No empathy. Only try to make people praise them in any situation. It’s actually quite amazing how far they will go. I saw my MIL get visible upset at my wife (and her sister) for crying at the funeral for their beloved aunt. Then, spend the rest of the day acting like everyone should be talking to her and giving her attention. Only thing we could do, as we learned through time, is just stay away from them as much as possible. No cure.
It's disgusting, but not unexpected. I remember Trump responding to another death, that of John Dingell, by implying the man was in hell. This comment is more overt than that, but no less heinous.
That was five years ago, when he had to worry about getting re-elected. Now that such things are no longer a concern to him, he can say anything he wants without fear. Even if his base gets mad at him, he knows that all he needs to do is throw them a little red meat, get a superficial win, and they'll completely forget about it.
The difference is morons on the internet are not the face of our nation.