There are so many things happening right now that make it hard to know what truly matters, or what deserves attention. I try to keep my writing rooted in Canadian context. In our values, our humanity, and our political reality, and yet we all know that so much of our public conversation gets tugged off course by the behaviour of the President of the United States. It creates this constant state of “pending,” waiting for the next outburst, the next shockwave, the next moment that should never be normal but somehow becomes part of the daily noise.
But this time, the noise has become something else entirely. Last weekend in Los Angeles, a man and his wife were killed by their adult son, who had long struggled with addiction and mental illness. Their celebrity is not the relevant point here. This is, at its core, a human tragedy before it is anything else and it is one that cuts deeply because it speaks to something I know too well.
Very few people know this about my family, but with my husband’s permission, I will share this. In June 2020, my husband’s only sister, in fact only sibling was murdered in her own home by her adult son, who had battled mental illness and addiction for years. Cold Lake, Alberta, where this happened, is an Air Force base community. Although retired at the time, both my sister in law and her ex-husband had served their country in the Canadian Armed Forces and had remained in Cold Lake because of their deep connection to that community.
Everything that followed, the hearings, the grief, the confusion, the guilt, the hollowed out days, was its own kind of hell. Unless you’ve lived inside that nightmare, you cannot understand the full weight that lands on a family’s shoulders, or how impossible it is to reconcile love with tragedy.
So when I look at the Reiner family, I don’t see celebrity. I don’t see politics. I see human beings, stunned, grieving, horrified, ashamed, questioning themselves, replaying every moment where they wonder if something, anything, could have gone differently. That is what this kind of tragedy feels like. It is not something any family imagines they will ever have to say aloud. We certainly didn’t.
Most people, even many who support Donald Trump, seem genuinely appalled by the comments he made about Rob Reiner in the immediate aftermath of this unimaginable loss. And for good reason. When Charlie Kirk was murdered, there was strong criticism directed at anyone who even hinted that such violence was justified. And rightly so. That is the morality line a healthy society should hold.
So how can a President of the United States justify criticizing Rob Reiner’s family in their darkest hour? If cruelty was wrong then, how is it suddenly acceptable now?
“Beyond the pale” is the phrase I’ve heard repeatedly these last few days, and for once it feels accurate. It was cruelty for sport. And then he doubled down on it. Clearly there is no political ideology that excuses mocking a grieving family. Not conservative, not liberal, not anything.
Rob Reiner was known to most of us as “Meathead” on All in the Family, or as the director of films like Stand By Me, A Few Good Men, The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally, and Spinal Tap. Yes, his political views were strong. Many people disagreed with them. None of that matters today. A man and his wife were murdered, and their surviving family is shattered.
And yet the loudest, most powerful political voice in the United States chose, at this moment, to dehumanize them.
When people ask, “Why didn’t the family fix it?” I can only say this: you have no idea how hard families try. For years. For decades. With professionals, without professionals, with hope, without hope. Addiction and severe mental illness are not solved by parental willpower. They are battles that break families long before the worst day arrives.
Rob Reiner’s family is no different than ours was in 2020. They lived in pain, trying everything they could. And now they face a grief that will never fully heal.
This goes beyond politics. It goes beyond partisanship. It goes beyond anything a reasonable society should tolerate. Donald Trump crossed a moral line, maybe worse than any he has crossed before . And I say that as someone who has lived the reality of this kind of tragedy, who knows the shame, the confusion, the judgment, and the quiet, desperate question: What more could we have done?
There is no forgiveness for attacking a family in that moment. And I believe, truly, that this will be a defining point for many people, even among his supporters. Some moments reveal a person’s character in ways that cannot be dismissed, spun, or excused. This is one of them.
So let me finish with this:
If anyone tries to tell me that this is still about “the good things Trump is doing,” or that there is some political justification for this behaviour, then you’ve just met your match. This is the moment where I’m done entertaining those arguments. There is a line between disagreement and cruelty, and he stepped so far past it that there’s no coming back.
And if this moment doesn’t make people rethink their loyalty, then nothing will, because if cruelty toward the grieving isn’t a deal-breaker, what on earth is?
Nancy's Notes 