The president can’t walk this one back

At 1:26 this afternoon, while spending yet another weekend vacationing at Mar-a-Lago, away from Washington DC, and the Situation Room where he should be during this time of war, Donald J. Trump took a break from another day at his private golf resort, picked up his phone, and posted three of the most disgraceful sentences a sitting president has ever written. The President of the United States said he was “glad” that an American hero was dead.

He signed it with his full name and title, so there was no mistaking who wrote it. Robert Mueller’s family, his friends, and everyone who recognizes and appreciates his lifetime of service to this country were grieving his loss this morning, and that is what the President of the United States chose to say.

Robert Mueller died on Friday night. He was 81 years old. He had been battling Parkinson’s disease for years, quietly and privately, because that is who Robert Mueller was. On Saturday morning, his family released a short statement. “With deep sadness, we are sharing the news that Bob passed away. His family asks that their privacy be respected.” That was all they said. A family grieving in private, asking to be left alone. And before they had even made it through the morning, the man who dodged the draft five times had told the country he was glad their father, husband, and grandfather was gone.

Tonight I am heartbroken. Not just for Robert Mueller’s family, though my heart aches for them. I am heartbroken for our country. Heartbroken that we have fallen so far that a president of the United States would put something like this into the world on the day a man like this dies. A man who dedicated the majority of his adult life to protecting us from threats we cannot even imagine. A man who fought in combat, came home and decided he wanted to keep fighting for us throughout his decades of public service. Unlike Trump, he didn’t do this because it made him rich or famous, but because he loved this country.

So let me tell you about the man whose death the President of the United States celebrated this morning. Robert Mueller had a knee injury that could have kept him out of Vietnam. He waited a full year for it to heal so he could enlist. While other privileged young men were finding every way to avoid the draft, Mueller waited so he could go toward the danger. Donald Trump dodged the draft five times. One of those times was for bone spurs. Mueller shipped out as a rifle platoon leader with the 3rd Marine Division. His platoon was ambushed, and half of them became casualties. Under heavy enemy fire, he led a fire team across fire-swept terrain and recovered a wounded Marine. He earned the Bronze Star for valor. Months later, he was shot in the thigh during another ambush, held his position, defeated the hostile force, and earned the Purple Heart. He recovered at a field hospital and went back. After Vietnam, he spent decades in public service, leaving a prestigious law firm to prosecute homicides in Washington, DC, because he believed chasing the hardest, most thankless work was the point. He was a registered Republican confirmed unanimously by the Senate to lead the FBI one week before September 11 and transformed the bureau from the ground up, serving twelve years under presidents of both parties. In 2004, he was prepared to resign rather than let his own government authorize a surveillance program he believed was unconstitutional. He later said he was still most proud that the Marine Corps deemed him worthy of leading other Marines. That is who the President of the United States said he was glad was dead.

And that is why Trump hated him. Because Robert Mueller was everything Trump has never been and could never be, and Trump knew it. When Mueller was appointed special counsel in 2017, Trump’s reaction, recorded in the Mueller report from notes taken by his own Attorney General’s chief of staff, was: “Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my presidency. I’m f---ed.” For 22 months, Mueller worked in silence. Never held a press conference. Never responded to the hundreds of attacks. His report found that Russia interfered to help Trump win, that senior campaign officials shared polling data with Russian intelligence, that Trump pursued a Moscow real estate deal while publicly denying it, and that at least 77 lies were told by Trump’s people to the public, Congress, and federal investigators. The investigation produced 34 indictments, six convictions of Trump associates, and seven prison sentences. Mueller refused to clear Trump, writing: “If we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state.” The report added: “While this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.” Robert Mueller did not hurt anybody. He spent the final chapter of his career protecting the Constitution and the continuation of our government, not for one party but for all of us. Trump made it about himself, the way he always does. The only people hurt by the Mueller investigation were the people who committed crimes.

That is who is running this country. The man who celebrated the death of a combat Marine before lunch is the same man commanding a war from his phone by dinner, and he spent the hours in between proving that neither the living nor the dead are safe from what he has become. Because the Mueller post was not an isolated act of cruelty. It was the opening note of one of the most unhinged and dangerous days of his presidency.

He shared a black-and-white propaganda image of himself leaning on a desk, trying to look tough, captioned “No Games,” alongside a rant about sending ICE agents to replace TSA officers at airports, threatening the “immediate arrest of all Illegal Immigrants,” with “heavy emphasis on those from Somalia,” singling out Congresswoman Ilhan Omar and Minnesota by name. He posted that Democrats want to “give our Country away to the illegals.” He claimed the United States has “blown Iran off of the map” and attacked New York Times analyst David Sanger by name for reporting the facts. He then issued a 48-hour ultimatum threatening that if Iran does not “FULLY OPEN, WITHOUT THREAT, the Strait of Hormuz,” the United States “will hit and obliterate their various POWER PLANTS, STARTING WITH THE BIGGEST ONE FIRST.” This from a man posting from a golf course while a former Fox News host runs his war from the Pentagon.

And while Trump was posting propaganda and celebrating the death of a war hero, the war he started was spiraling toward a nuclear disaster the likes of which the world has never seen before. Tonight, Iranian missiles struck Dimona and Arad in southern Israel, near Israel’s main nuclear research center, and Israel’s military admitted it could not intercept them. One of the most heavily defended sites in the world, and Iran got through. Iran also fired missiles at Diego Garcia, the joint U.S.-U.K. military base in the Indian Ocean, 2,500 miles away, which means their missiles can reach far beyond what anyone previously acknowledged. Israel’s army chief said Iran fired a two-stage intercontinental ballistic missile. So when Donald Trump tells you from his golf course that he has blown Iran off the map, ask yourself a very simple question. If that is true, how are they penetrating Israeli air defenses around a nuclear facility? And how are they reaching a military base 2,500 miles away? Trump is lying, the way he always lies, and the war he started is careening toward nuclear escalation. And the man in charge spent his Saturday telling us he was glad a war hero was dead.

While Trump was playing strongman on social media, posting propaganda images of himself and issuing threats from his phone, the people who actually know what strength looks like were showing the world the difference between a real leader and a reckless con man.

President George W. Bush, the Republican who nominated Mueller to lead the FBI, wrote: “Laura and I are deeply saddened by the loss of Robert Mueller. Bob dedicated his life to public service. As a Marine in Vietnam, he proved he was ready for tough assignments. He earned a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart before returning home to pursue law. In 2001, only one week into the job as the 6th Director of the FBI, Bob transitioned the agency mission to protecting the homeland after September 11. He led it effectively, helping prevent another terrorist attack on U.S. soil.”

President Barack Obama, the man who asked Mueller to stay past his ten-year term, wrote: “Bob Mueller was one of the finest directors in the history of the FBI, transforming the bureau after 9/11 and saving countless lives. But it was his relentless commitment to the rule of law and his unwavering belief in our bedrock values that made him one of the most respected public servants of our time.”

James Comey, Mueller’s successor at the FBI, wrote: “Bob Mueller was a truly good and honest person and an extraordinary American patriot. May his example inspire people of integrity to serve our country.” Andrew McCabe, the former FBI deputy director, said simply: “He was just an absolute American hero and an American patriot.”

Two past presidents and two FBI directors, and so many more, all of them honoring a man the current president said he was glad was dead. But the responses that mattered most today came from the people who should be on Trump’s side, the people from his own party, his own network, his own legal team, who looked at what he posted and could not stay silent.

Ty Cobb, a Republican and Donald Trump’s former White House attorney, the man who counseled the president through the Mueller investigation, appeared on MS Now Saturday and called Trump “a demented narcissist” on national television. And he went on to say that Trump “seriously hates anybody who stands in opposition to him, has reworked the Justice Department into a revenge machine, and rules the country in a very authoritarian manner with the assistance of a cowardly cabinet and even more cowardly Republicans in Congress.”

Brit Hume, Fox News’s chief political analyst, posted: “This is the kind of stuff Trump does that makes people not just oppose him but hate him. There was no need to say anything.”

Representative Don Bacon, a Nebraska Republican, called it “clearly wrong and unchristian behavior” and said, “the vast majority of Americans want better.” Republican Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina told reporters: “I certainly don’t celebrate the death of somebody who you could disagree maybe on certain matters, but this is a person who served this country and deserves more respect than that.” Even Fox News viewers responding under Fox’s own post on X called the president “inhumane.” One wrote: “There is no need for that. The whole investigation was a hoax and shouldn’t have happened, but the man has a family.” When you are losing your own viewers on Fox News, something has cracked.

Representative Dan Goldman, a former federal prosecutor, wrote: “Mueller and Trump represent polar opposites of what a public servant should be.” Representative Seth Moulton, a Marine veteran, said: “Whether you support the President or not, you know this comment is disgusting,” and called Trump “a horrible human being and an embarrassment to the United States.” Father James Martin, a Jesuit priest and editor at large of America Magazine, wrote: “God help us. This is disgraceful language coming from a Christian, or anyone with a soul. It was just as wrong to celebrate the death of Charlie Kirk as it is to celebrate that of Robert Mueller. May they rest in peace. And may we never forget that Jesus’s message is about mercy.”

And that brings us to the hypocrisy that cannot go unnoticed. This is the same administration that vowed to revoke visas and deport people who made negative comments about the death of right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk. The same administration that built a database of anyone who said anything critical. Former Fox Sports analyst Ryan Satin asked on X: “Remember when they made a database of people who said anything slightly deemed as negative about Charlie Kirk?” And writer Hemant Mehta put it in a single sentence that says it all: “College professors are banned from accurately describing a dead person’s legacy. Republicans can gleefully celebrate the death of anyone who tries to hold them accountable.”

And then there was the silence that said everything. The FBI did not issue a statement. Kash Patel, the current FBI director and a Trump loyalist, said nothing publicly about the death of the man who led the bureau for twelve years and served longer than anyone except J. Edgar Hoover. Robert Mueller spent the last year of his life watching the institution he gave so much to get handed to a man who is not qualified by any stretch of the imagination to lead any department within the agency, let alone direct it, and he watched it get turned into his worst fears, a political weapon. He never got to see Trump held accountable for any of his alleged crimes. He spent his final year knowing what they were doing to it, and he died knowing they were not done. He deserved better. We all do.

I think about what Donald Trump is doing to this country. About how he is giving people not just permission to be cruel, and to be their worst selves, but how he is making it normal. We are raising children in a time when the President of the United States says he is glad a Bronze Star recipient is dead, and a significant portion of this country will defend it by Monday morning. He is breaking down everything this country is supposed to stand for, and it is not just him; it is the enablers, the people who look at all of this and still think everything is okay, who defend him, and who are still choosing silence because that is easier than courage. Trump is exactly what Robert Mueller spent his life protecting our country from, and now he is running it.

But here is what Donald Trump does not understand, and what he has never understood, about men like Robert Mueller. The work does not die with the man. Mueller’s 448-page report exists. The evidence he gathered exists. The 34 people indicted, the six convictions, the exposed lies, the documented obstruction, all of it exists, and none of it is going away. And Mueller was not the only one who knew what he found. His prosecutors, his investigators, the people who spent 22 months building that case, they are still here, and they remember everything. The truth has a way of surviving the people who try to bury it. Trump has been trying for years. He has not succeeded, and he never will. Someday, the full, unredacted record of what Robert Mueller uncovered will see the light, and when it does, history will not be kind to the man who said he was glad the person who found it was dead.

Robert Mueller set an example that will outlast every lie Donald Trump has ever told. I think about the children growing up right now in a country where the President of the United States leads with cruelty instead of courage, and I think about what Robert Mueller showed those same children about what a real American carries with him to the end. That you go toward the danger, not away from it. That you do the thankless work because it matters, not because it will make you famous. That when they come after you with every weapon they have, you do not flinch or respond, you keep your head down, and you do the job. That is what strength looks like. And no amount of rage posting from a golf course can take that away from the kids who are watching and who will remember which kind of man they want to be. That is why I still have hope for America, and you should too.

I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather

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This commentary represents my personal opinions and analysis of matters of public concern, informed by publicly available information. Any references to individuals constitute opinion and commentary protected under the First Amendment.

Picture of the day: Love seeing this weekly group of protesters whenever we are able to take a drive down the coast. They are the resistance keepers, reminding us all that none of this is okay.

Sources:
https://www.npr.org/2026/03/21/nx-s1-5755800/robert-s-mueller-iii-ex-fbi-director-who-led-2016-russia-inquiry-dead-at-81
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5794930-trump-reacts-mueller-death/ https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/robert-mueller-former-fbi-director-who-investigated-russia-trump-campaign-ties-dies-at-81
https://www.mediaite.com/media/news/attorney-who-helped-trump-navigate-the-mueller-investigation-blasts-president-as-a-demented-narcissist/
https://www.mediaite.com/media/news/fox-news-brit-hume-blasts-trumps-nasty-mueller-death-comments-makes-people-hate-him/
https://www.advocate.com/politics/national/trump-robert-mueller-death-celebration https://www.newsweek.com/trump-reacts-to-former-director-fbi-robert-muellers-death-11715768 https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/trump-slammed-saying-m-glad-205241051.html
https://www.bushcenter.org/newsroom/statement-by-president-george-w-bush-on-robert-mueller
https://www.acslaw.org/projects/the-presidential-investigation-education-project/other-resources/key-findings-of-the-mueller-report/
https://www.ms.now/news/iran-strikes-near-israeli-nuclear-research-center-as-trump-threatens-attacks-on-iranian-power-plants https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/3/21/former-fbi-chief-robert-mueller-dead-at-81 https://www.france24.com/en/middle-east/20260321-middle-east-war-live-trump-mulls-winding-down-iran-war-as-us-sends-thousands-more-marines https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/dozens-injured-in-israel-after-iranian-missile-strikes-target-two-areas-near-main-nuclear-research-center