Recommendations of the Editorial team
Donald Trump celebrated the death of Robert Mueller on Saturday and wrote that he was “glad” that the former FBI director and special counsel who investigated the president’s ties to Russia during the 2016 election campaign had died.
“Robert Mueller just died. Well, I’m glad he’s dead. He can’t hurt innocent people anymore!” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Saturday, shortly after NBC News reported that the 81-year-old former FBI director had died.
Mueller, who revealed last year that he had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, has long been one of Trump’s declared enemies. Mueller’s high-profile investigation concluded that Russia tried to influence the 2016 election in Trump’s favor. While Mueller did not find that Trump’s campaign actively sought out and coordinated with Russian actors to manipulate the election results, the investigation cast a long shadow over much of Trump’s first term. It led to a series of indictments, eight guilty pleas and convictions of prominent Trump allies, including political mastermind Roger Stone and former campaign adviser George Papadopoulos.
“Trump Derangement Syndrome”
Trump regularly attacked Mueller in connection with the investigation, claiming that the veteran official and longtime public servant was part of a vast, illegal Democratic conspiracy to remove Trump from office. Trump made similar attacks against former special counsel Jack Smith, who led the Justice Department’s investigation into Trump’s attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, which he lost to Joe Biden, and Trump’s storage of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, after he left office in 2021.
Trump’s scornful reaction to Mueller’s death is not the first time that the president has commented with relish on the deaths of supposed opponents. When popular director and frequent Trump critic Rob Reiner was brutally killed in his home in December, the president joked that he had died of an “incurable” case of “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”
