The Rules of Grief
The post-Kirk purge was never about decency. Trump's response to Rob Reiner's murder proves it.
Three months ago, a kindergarten assistant in South Carolina named Lauren Vaughn saw news that Charlie Kirk had been shot. She opened Facebook and posted a quote from Kirk himself, something he’d said in 2023: that gun deaths were unfortunate but “worth it” if they preserved Second Amendment rights. She added two words: “Thoughts and prayers.”
Vaughn is 37, a Christian who has done missionary work in Guatemala. She told Reuters the prayer she offered was genuine. What was on her mind when she posted? The active-shooter drills at her elementary school. The fear on her five-year-olds’ faces as they practiced hiding from a gunman. She thought maybe, just maybe, seeing Kirk’s own words about acceptable gun deaths might get through to people who’d otherwise dismiss concerns about firearms. “Maybe now they’ll listen,” she thought.
On the day Kirk died, Vaughn told a Facebook friend she felt “no satisfaction” at the assassination. “Just heartbreak for everyone and anyone affected by gun violence and the hope that one day, enough will be enough.”
A few days later, she was fired.
Her termination letter from the Spartanburg County School District described her post as “inflammatory, unprofessional, and inappropriate.” The district claimed her words “appeared to endorse Mr. Kirk’s murder or indicate that it was ‘worth’ him losing his life to protect Americans’ constitutional rights.”
She quoted the man. She added “thoughts and prayers.” And she lost her job.
The scale of it
Vaughn was one of more than 600 Americans who faced professional consequences for what they said about Kirk’s September 10 assassination. Reuters documented the scope: firings, suspensions, investigations, formal discipline. They reviewed court records, public statements, local news coverage, and conducted interviews with two dozen people who were punished. And they noted the 600 figure almost certainly undercounts the real total, since many employers never publicly disclosed what they did.
Education workers bore the brunt of it. Reuters counted more than 350 who lost jobs, were suspended, or faced formal investigation. The list included 50 academics and senior university administrators. Three high school principals. Two cheerleading coaches. A theology instructor. Teachers, nurses, airline workers, firefighters, doctors. Even a Secret Service agent got placed on administrative leave. The State Department pulled visas from six foreigners for “celebrating” the killing.
What got people in trouble? Reuters found at least 15 were punished for saying something like “karma” or “divine justice.” Nine more caught hell for variations on “Good riddance.” Some posts were genuinely ugly. But a lot of people who lost their jobs had explicitly condemned the violence while also criticizing Kirk’s politics. Or they’d simply observed that his rhetoric had consequences. Or — like Vaughn — they just quoted his own words back at him.
A Ball State University staffer was fired for posting: “Charlie Kirk’s death is a reflection of the violence, fear and hatred he sowed. It does not excuse his death, AND it’s a sad truth.” An Iowa art teacher lost his job for posting “1 Nazi down.” A Clemson climate scientist shared someone else’s Facebook post that read, in part: “No one should be gunned down — not a school child, not an influencer, not a politician.” He also got fired.
An instructor at Enterprise State Community College in Alabama was terminated for calling attention to the Evergreen High School shooting that happened the same day Kirk was killed. Her TikTok post said: “Let us not forget some other children were shot in another f—king shooting today.” That was enough.
The machine
The punishment machine started spinning almost before Kirk’s body was cold. Chaya Raichik, who runs the Libs of TikTok account, posted “THIS IS WAR” on X roughly half an hour after Trump announced Kirk had died. She started doxxing people immediately — sharing names, workplaces, screenshots of their posts. By the end of that first night, she’d put the professional details of 37 people into the feed, tagging posts with things like “absolutely vile” and “Your tax dollars pay her salary” and “Would you want him teaching your kids?”
The next day, she wrote: “It’s actually terrifying how many of them are teachers, doctors and military members. We need a massive purge of these evil psychos who want to kiII all of us for simply having opposing political views.”
Conservative activist Scott Presler ran a parallel operation. He was drowning in tips from people who wanted to get Kirk critics fired. “Can’t keep up with all of you,” he posted on September 12. “Post your submissions below & I’ll go through them as I can.” Within a day, that post had drawn over 2,700 replies—each one a potential target.
A website calling itself “Expose Charlie’s Murderers” assembled a blacklist. It collected tens of thousands of dollars in cryptocurrency before disappearing. WIRED reported that people whose names appeared on the site received death threats.
This wasn’t just angry people on the internet, though. It was government officials using the machinery of their offices. Vice President JD Vance went on Kirk’s podcast five days after the assassination and told listeners: “Call them out, and, hell, call their employer.” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth directed staff to identify and purge military service members who mocked or condoned Kirk’s killing. Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller declared on the podcast that the administration would “destroy” progressive groups he blamed for the murder.
Republican officials publicly threatened to deprive universities and schools of taxpayer funds unless specific critics were fired. Florida’s education commissioner sent a memo to school district superintendents threatening to investigate “every educator” who posted “despicable comments” about Kirk’s death. Texas received more than 200 complaints about teachers’ posts and launched investigations. Oklahoma’s state superintendent promised to investigate too.
At the federal level, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr threatened ABC’s broadcast license over Jimmy Kimmel’s monologue criticizing the MAGA movement’s response to Kirk’s death. Kimmel had said the “MAGA gang” was “desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.” Carr went on a podcast and said: “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct and take actions on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”
ABC suspended the show indefinitely. Sinclair Broadcast Group announced it would air a one-hour tribute to Kirk in Kimmel’s time slot and said the suspension was “not enough.”
Trump, of course, was thrilled. “Great News for America,” he posted on Truth Social when the suspension was announced.
What they said it was about
The official line was that this was about decency. About opposing political violence. About maintaining civil discourse in a time of division.
Trump proclaimed a National Day of Remembrance for Kirk, calling him “a martyr for truth and freedom” and “a Christian martyr.” He compared Kirk to Martin Luther King Jr. when posthumously awarding him the Presidential Medal of Freedom. At Kirk’s memorial service at State Farm Stadium in Arizona, Trump said Kirk had become “immortal.”
The White House statement on the firings read: “President Trump and the entire Administration will not hesitate to speak the truth — for years, radical leftists have slandered their political opponents as Nazis and Fascists, inspiring left-wing violence. It must end.”
Standards of behavior should be high for people in positions of public trust, supporters argued. Freedom of speech is not freedom from consequence. If you can’t show basic human decency when a young father of two is assassinated, you shouldn’t be teaching children or treating patients or serving in the military.
This is how it was framed. Mourning the dead is a basic human responsibility. People who fail to do so reveal something broken in themselves. And if you can’t meet that standard, you don’t deserve your job.
Got it. Let’s keep that framework in mind.
Yesterday
Rob Reiner and his wife Michele were stabbed to death in their Brentwood home on Sunday. Their son Nick, 32, who has struggled publicly with addiction for years — a struggle Rob himself helped turn into a film called “Being Charlie” back in 2016 — has been arrested and is in custody on $4 million bail.
Reiner was 78. He directed “When Harry Met Sally,” “The Princess Bride,” “A Few Good Men,” “Stand By Me,” “Misery,” “This Is Spinal Tap” and its recent sequel. He won two Emmys playing Meathead on “All in the Family.” His father was Carl Reiner, who gave us “The Dick Van Dyke Show” and the 2000 Year Old Man. The tributes have been pouring in: Stephen King, Gavin Newsom, the Obamas, Mayor Karen Bass, the families of Norman Lear and Penny Marshall.
Reiner was also an outspoken critic of Donald Trump. He called Trump “mentally unfit” to be president in a 2017 interview with Variety. He warned in October that the country had “a year before this country becomes a full-on autocracy, and democracy completely leaves us.” After Jimmy Kimmel was suspended, Reiner went on CNN and said: “This may be the last time you ever see me because there’s only a couple of us that are speaking out in this hard way.”
This morning, President Trump posted his response on Truth Social.
What the President of the United States said about a murder victim
Here’s the full post:
“A very sad thing happened last night in Hollywood. Rob Reiner, a tortured and struggling, but once very talented movie director and comedy star, has passed away, together with his wife, Michele, reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME, sometimes referred to as TDS. He was known to have driven people CRAZY by his raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump, with his obvious paranoia reaching new heights as the Trump Administration surpassed all goals and expectations of greatness, and with the Golden Age of America upon us, perhaps like never before. May Rob and Michele rest in peace!”
Read that again if you need to.
A 78-year-old man and his 68-year-old wife were stabbed to death in their home, allegedly by their own son who has battled addiction. Their surviving children are in shock. And the President of the United States posted that Reiner died “due to the anger he caused others” by criticizing him.
He blamed the victim. He mocked the dead. He made a double homicide about himself. And he did it within hours of the bodies being discovered.
The silence
I don’t expect consistency from Trump. The man has never pretended to operate by any principle beyond self-interest. What I find more interesting is the response — or the lack of one — from the people who spent the fall building databases of Kirk critics and demanding mass firings.
Where is Libs of TikTok declaring “THIS IS WAR” over Trump’s callousness? Where are the calls from JD Vance to show basic human decency? Where is Pete Hegseth directing staff to identify anyone who celebrated or mocked this family tragedy?
A few Republicans have pushed back. Marjorie Taylor Greene — who has been feuding with Trump for months now — wrote on X: “Rob Reiner and his wife were tragically killed at the hands of their own son, who reportedly had drug addiction and other issues, and their remaining children are left in serious mourning and heartbreak. This is a family tragedy, not about politics or political enemies.”
Thomas Massie called it “inappropriate and disrespectful discourse about a man who was just brutally murdered. I guess my elected GOP colleagues, the VP, and White House staff will just ignore it because they’re afraid? I challenge anyone to defend it.”
So far, no one has taken him up on that challenge.
Whoopi Goldberg, who was directed by Reiner in “Ghosts of Mississippi,” got choked up on The View this morning talking about her friend. When co-host Sunny Hostin started to read Trump’s post, Goldberg stopped her: “Don’t read it. Just tell them that it’s there.”
Then Goldberg said what everyone was thinking: “He talked so much about Charlie Kirk and caring, and suddenly this is what he puts out? Have you no shame? No shame at all? Can you get any lower?”
Ana Navarro added: “There’s an American family grieving. This is a tragedy, not just for the family, but for all who knew and loved him, and for the President of the United States to make this about him, as a way to attack Rob Reiner because he exercised his American right to speak up with what he disagreed with, is shameful. It is disgraceful. And of all the disgusting things that Donald Trump has done, this is right up there.”
What this was always about
The post-Kirk purge was never about mourning. It wasn’t about opposing political violence or maintaining civil discourse or respecting the dead. It was about power. It was about demonstrating that there would be consequences for insufficient loyalty, for failing to perform the correct emotions at the correct time about the correct people.
A kindergarten teacher quoting Kirk’s own words about gun violence? Fired. A climate scientist sharing a post that explicitly said “No one should be gunned down”? Fired. A late-night host criticizing the MAGA movement’s response to the killing? Suspended by government pressure.
The president of the United States mocking a murder victim hours after his body was found, blaming him for his own death because he criticized Trump? That’s just Trump being Trump.
Reuters called their investigation “The Charlie Kirk purge” and described it as mapping “the pro-Trump machinery of retaliation now reshaping American political life.” Some academics they interviewed compared it to the Red Scare, when the test wasn’t whether you’d actually done anything wrong but whether you’d demonstrated adequate loyalty.
Even Ted Cruz — Ted Cruz! — acknowledged on his podcast that letting government decide “what speech we like and what we don’t” sets a dangerous precedent. Silencing voices like Jimmy Kimmel’s might feel good, he said, but “when it’s used to silence every conservative in America, we will regret it.”
Here’s the thing, though: it won’t be used to silence conservatives. That’s the point. The rules don’t apply evenly. They never did.
The actual rules
Let me spell them out, since they’re now pretty clear:
If a prominent conservative is killed, you must mourn publicly and appropriately. Quoting their own words is not allowed. Pointing out the consequences of their rhetoric is not allowed. Criticizing how their allies respond is not allowed. Failing to show sufficient grief is grounds for termination, investigation, deportation, or FCC action against your employer.
If a prominent liberal is killed, the president can mock them, blame them for their own death, and make it about himself. No one will be fired for celebrating. No one will be investigated. No one will lose their visa.
That’s it. That’s the whole thing.
The mourning requirements were never about principle. They were a loyalty test dressed up in the language of civility. And now Trump has made that impossible to deny.
Where this leaves us
Julie Strebe had been a sheriff’s deputy in Salem, Missouri. After Kirk was shot, she wrote some things on Facebook, including: “Empathy is not owed to oppressors.” That was enough. Her bosses couldn’t handle the flood of calls demanding her termination. Someone put up a hand-drawn sign across the street from her house: “Julie Strebe Supports the Assassination of Charles Kirk.” She’s got five surveillance cameras around her property now. She only fills up her car after dark to avoid neighbors. She told Reuters she wants to leave but can’t abandon her extended family. “I just don’t feel like I could ever let my guard down.”
Kimberly Hunt worked in HR in Arizona. She got fired too. But she’s raised over $88,000 through a GoFundMe she titled “Doxxed, Fired, but Not Silenced.” She plans to use it for education, maybe become a content creator. The whole experience, she told Reuters, has “definitely just emboldened me.”
Karen Leader had been an associate professor at Florida Atlantic University. A former DeSantis staffer screenshotted some of her posts about Kirk and tagged the university. That was all it took. She’s on administrative leave now, future uncertain. “Whether my career is over or not, I don’t know,” she told Reuters.
Scores of people who posted anti-Kirk comments have since scrubbed or locked their accounts. The retaliation silenced many voices. Others said in interviews that they are pushing back.
Lauren Vaughn, the kindergarten assistant, is challenging her dismissal in federal court. At least 19 lawsuits have been filed by people who were disciplined, contending their comments constitute protected speech.
Meanwhile, President Trump posted what he posted about Rob Reiner, and nothing will happen to him. No one will call his employer. No one will demand consequences. The machine that mobilized to destroy 600 lives over insufficient grief will not turn its attention to the man who couldn’t even pretend to show basic human decency toward a murder victim.
Because that’s the rule. They make the rules. And the rules are for you, not for them.
I've been reading your thoughtful newsletters for quite some time now, but THIS ONE is why I upgraded to a paid subscription. The corruption, nihilism, and cruelty of this government must be shouted from the rooftops, so that even the Foxnews-addled masses might hear it. Thank you!
The thing about Trump's "grief" is that we know it was all for show. Recall Jimmy Kimmel's line about Trump's mourning Charlie Kirk being like "how a four-year-old mourns a goldfish." He looked irritated at Kirk's remembrance ceremony, too, like he was upset that he wasn't the star. The man is incapable of genuine sympathy.
While you're right that Trump probably won't face any serious backlash about his post, maybe some of his supporters will be turned off by how reprehensible his comments are. A man can hope, eh?