I’ve Had Enough...

I wasn’t shocked when I saw Donald Trump’s post about Rob Reiner and his wife.

And that fact alone should terrify all of us.

To be clear, the post itself was vile. It was cruel. It was indefensible. Mocking two people less than twelve hours after they were reportedly murdered is beyond the pale. But when it crossed my screen, my immediate reaction was not surprise. It was recognition.

I knew he was going to go there.

That realization hit me harder than the post itself. Because it means that I, like much of this country, have become desensitized to behavior that would have ended any other presidency on the spot. Trump has spent nearly a decade dragging the standards of American political life lower and lower, until moral outrage barely registers anymore.

When a friend dropped the post into a group chat I’m in, a mix of MAGA supporters and liberals, everyone was furious. Even people who usually bend over backward to excuse Trump had nothing. No spin. No defense. Just silence.

That is not accidental. Trump’s entire political strategy is outrage. He shocks, he provokes, he forces everyone to argue about the most grotesque version of his behavior instead of the substance of what he is doing. Today, he simply pushed that strategy so far that even his own base struggled to keep up.

And the reason I wasn’t shocked is simple. We have seen this movie before. Over and over.

This is the same man who mocked a reporter’s physical disability on the campaign trail. The same man who bragged about sexually assaulting women. The same man who recently said a sitting U.S. senator should be executed. The same man who posted AI videos of Barack Obama being arrested. The same man who mocked the death of a political opponent’s wife. The same man who has cut aid, destabilized regions, and treated human suffering like collateral damage in a branding exercise.

So yes, Trump’s latest post was disgusting. But it was not an anomaly. It was a continuation.

What makes this especially dangerous is that for Trump, politics is a game. A spectacle. A revenue stream. He is insulated from the consequences of the chaos he creates. For millions of Americans, especially minorities, working families, and people who rely on basic social services, this is not a game. This is real life.

And that brings me to what I’ve truly had enough of.

The double standard.

Or as my friend Pondering Politics calls it, the asymmetry of expectations.

Thirty years ago, Hillary Clinton endured a year-long scandal because she made roughly ten thousand dollars in a legitimate stock trade before entering the White House. That story dominated headlines.

Fast forward to today. Melania Trump reportedly secures a forty-million-dollar Amazon deal after a private White House meeting with Jeff Bezos. Trump’s personal net worth balloons by roughly three billion dollars while in office. And large segments of the country shrug.

Joe Biden’s net worth increased modestly through real estate and investments. That is treated as suspicious. Trump openly monetizes the presidency, and it is waved away as normal.

People tell themselves both sides are corrupt. That Nancy Pelosi and Donald Trump are two sides of the same coin.

They are not.

Even if you believe Pelosi’s stock trading is unethical, it is a grain of sand compared to Trump’s beach of corruption. A beach he owns, monetizes, and advertises.

The same false equivalency shows up everywhere. Hillary Clinton once referred to Trump as an illegitimate president. Democrats were criticized, rightly, for careless language. But Trump spent a year claiming an election was stolen before it even happened. He declared victory before votes were counted. He lied relentlessly after losing. He pressured officials to overturn results. He incited an insurrection.

These things are not comparable. Pretending they are is intellectual dishonesty.

What Trump did today was not illegal. But it was depraved. And in any functional political system, it would carry consequences. If Barack Obama had said something similar, impeachment would have been immediate. If Joe Biden had done it, investigations would last years.

Instead, Trump keeps pushing further. Calling for the hanging of Democrats. Threatening judges. Weaponizing the Justice Department. Talking openly about a third term. Targeting the media. Targeting law firms. Purging civil servants. Conducting brutal immigration raids. Floating the idea of terminating the Constitution.

Any one of these would have ended a normal presidency in a normal time.

We do not live in normal times.

Trump has lowered the bar so far that cruelty itself is now content. And when he is gone, people will point back to moments like this and say, “Well, he did it first.” That is the damage. That is the legacy.

I’ve had enough of pretending this is fine. I’ve had enough of pretending the standards are the same. And I’ve had enough of letting this behavior become background noise.

If you’re reading this and you feel the same way, the most important thing you can do is stay informed, stay engaged, and refuse to normalize what should never be normal.

We cannot afford to get used to this.