Within minutes of news breaking Saturday of former FBI Director Robert Mueller’s passing, President Donald Trump took to social media to celebrate his death in a shocking social media post, sparking immediate backlash from critics who called the president’s language “disgusting and despicable.”
“Robert Mueller just died. Good, I’m glad he’s dead,” Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social.
The remarks were immediately met with scorn from critics of all stripes, including prominent liberal political commentator Ed Krassenstein, who went on to lavish praise on Mueller for his role in leading the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
“This is disgusting and despicable,” Krassenstein wrote to their more than 1 million followers on X. “Trump literally just celebrated Robert Mueller dying. Mueller did so much good for America.”
Ken Dilanian, a justice and intelligence correspondent for MS NOW, responded to Trump’s remarks by making an unflattering comparison between the president and Mueller.
“In an era when many young men – including President Trump – were trying to avoid serving in Vietnam, Mueller not only volunteered for the Marines after graduating from Princeton – he spent a year waiting for an injured knee to heal so he could serve,” Dilanian wrote in a social media post on X. “I have always found that [to] be the most compelling fact about him.”
Trump infamously received a deferment from conscription in 1968 during the Vietnam War, a deferment that allowed the then-22-year-old future president to avoid military service. Furthermore, the deferment – a medical exemption citing alleged bone spurs in his heels – was issued to Trump by a podiatrist who rented office space from Trump’s father, a connection that led The New York Times to theorize that the medical diagnosis may have been “granted as a courtesy to the elder Mr. Trump.”
Others, like Fox sports analyst Ryan Satin, pointed to what they characterized as Trump’s double standard, having belittled Mueller’s death openly while his own administration has vowed to pull visas and deport people who joke about the death of right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk.
“Remember when they made a database of people who said anything slightly deemed as negative about Charlie Kirk?” Satin wrote in a social media post on X.
