How Will We Know?

I set out to write a familiar kind of year-end column — the “what did we learn this year?” exercise. The kind where you look for patterns, early warning signs, clues about what to watch in the year ahead.

And then I got completely distracted. Disturbed, actually.

By the president’s attack on the late Rob Reiner.

Sometimes you don’t know, in the moment, when something that feels small is actually consequential. This felt like one of those moments. And yes, I know what some of you are already thinking: Haven’t we been here before? Haven’t you and others used past Trump moments to suggest the end is near?

Fair questions. I’m writing this fully aware that this may end up as just another ugly wart on Donald Trump’s moral and ethical legacy — nothing more.

Because on one level, it fits neatly into a category we’ve grown far too accustomed to: shocking, but not surprising. Donald Trump is violating a norm. Again. Speaking ill of the dead. Again. Saying something out loud that most people know — instinctively — should never be said at all, let alone just hours after someone was horrifically murdered by a loved one.

Which leads me to a question I keep asking myself:

Is he still capable of shocking us?

For the moment, the answer appears to be yes. And maybe that’s the only sliver of good news here — if you want to call it that. The reaction mattered. Even people who usually defend him or look the other way seemed unwilling to do so this time. (See: Woods, James)

Why? Because this crossed a line most of us were raised to recognize without needing it explained.

You don’t speak ill of the newly dead — unless their name is Adolf Hitler.

I remember one of my earliest bosses, a veteran Republican of the Watergate era, being privately appalled by the glowing coverage Richard Nixon received after he died. But he didn’t vent publicly. He waited. Literally waited until Nixon was buried. Only then did he call an all-staff meeting, bring in someone who had lived through Watergate, and explain — calmly and deliberately — why Nixon’s legacy deserved scrutiny beyond the obituaries.

He worried that we’d come to see Nixon as just another flawed politician, rather than someone who repeatedly tried to bend or ignore the Constitution whenever it got in the way of his agenda — an unforgivable sin in our system.

There was a code. You wait. You let emotions settle. Then you speak candidly and soberly.

Donald Trump has never cared much for codes — social, political, or moral. That part isn’t new. What is unsettling is how quickly we’ve learned to expect it, and how easily today’s outrage becomes tomorrow’s baseline.

He crosses a line. We recoil. We argue. Then we move on. He denies, deflects, or changes the subject. And the bar resets — lower.

But there’s another part of this episode that should trouble all of us, regardless of party.

After the firestorm surrounding his initial Truth Social post — which grotesquely implied that the Reiners were killed because of their hatred of Trump — the president had a chance to walk it back.

Instead, he doubled down on the camera.

Which means only one of two things happened in the hours between that post and his public comments.

Either someone on his staff tried — gently, privately — to intervene. Maybe something as simple as: You’re going to get asked about this. Let it go. It didn’t land well. And he ignored them.

Or worse: that conversation never happened at all.

No one had the nerve to tell him how badly this was playing — even with his own supporters.

One of the hallmarks of aging is losing your filter. Sometimes it’s harmless. Grandma says something inappropriate at Thanksgiving, and we laugh it off. But when what slips out is unrestrained narcissism — when the quiet part is no longer quiet — it stops being funny. It becomes disturbing. And it raises a question no one wants to ask out loud: Is he all there all the time?

Given what the country just lived through with Joe Biden, you’d think there would be heightened sensitivity to this issue. Instead, the lesson of the Biden years was something darker: staff can become petrified of their boss. Or worse, empowered by the ability to manage an aging, forgetful, narcissistic president.

Democrats are still paying a credibility price for that. Voters believe — rightly or wrongly — that party leaders looked the other way and hoped no one would notice what everyone clearly did. That’s why even as Democrats keep winning elections, many of their own voters remain furious with them.

Potential 2028 Democratic candidates have already said, on the record, that Biden’s inner circle will have to answer for it. You were there. You could have said something. Waiting didn’t look brave. It looked cowardly. It’s why Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg may never fully get off the ground in 2028 — too many Democrats see them as complicit.

Which brings us back to Trump.

When a president says something indefensible, is given a chance to correct it, and instead doubles down — and that president is 80 years old — it’s fair to ask:

Is the filter still there?

And if it isn’t, does anyone around him feel empowered to step in?

I’ve avoided armchair diagnoses. Temperament and mental fitness are sensitive topics. But the public deserves transparency, not denial.

I’ve always believed Trump’s biggest obstacle isn’t ideology. It’s temperament. He may understand grievance politics. He may have instincts about what resonates. But without self-control, instinct becomes liability.

With Biden, the change was observable. The Biden of 2015 wasn’t the Biden of 2024. His habits shifted. His engagement narrowed. That made it easier — eventually — to ask uncomfortable questions.

Trump is harder. His erratic behavior isn’t new. He’s always said what others wouldn’t. That was marketed as authenticity. He says what I’m thinking.

But that history makes it harder to recognize when something has actually changed — when norm-breaking turns into something more concerning.

The Trump of ten years ago would have responded to a celebrity death by inserting himself into it — claiming proximity, relevance, credit. A younger Trump knew that trashing the newly dead was a bad look. He would have found a way to talk about how Michele Singer Reiner’s acclaim somehow reflected on him — maybe even tying it to her shooting the cover photo for The Art of the Deal.

We’d have rolled our eyes. And moved on.

This was different. This felt like a Trump with less filter and less self-control.

And that’s where the political risk lies for Republicans.

Democratic leaders are being punished for ignoring reality. Republicans are now flirting with the same mistake.

We’re not even through year one of Trump’s second term. If you’re J.D. Vance or Marco Rubio, your path to the presidency depends on this administration going well enough that voters want a sequel. Proximity to Trump is an asset — until it isn’t.

Ask Kamala Harris how much loyalty is worth once voters feel misled. Ask Mike Pence how quickly proximity turns into exile.

This doesn’t get better on its own. It never does.

Swing voters who returned to Trump thought they were getting first-term Trump. What they’re seeing feels different — sharper, more erratic, more unfiltered. That mismatch is familiar. It’s how many voters felt about Joe Biden by the end. They thought they were electing the energetic, moderate Biden of the Obama years. They didn’t like what they got instead.

Which is why the question matters now, not later.

Is everything okay here?

Is anyone willing to say something?

Or are we watching another slow-motion credibility collapse — one that won’t just land on the president, but on everyone who insisted we shouldn’t believe our own eyes?

That’s the lesson of the last few years.

And it’s one elected Republicans — and the people who work for them — ignore at their own political peril.