Trump Said 'Good' When Mueller Died. Melania Said Nothing. Then She Asked for Civility.
This piece was published the night Robert Mueller died. It received over three million views.
We are republishing it today because of something that happened this week, which is described in the new paragraph below. Read to the end. You will understand.
Robert Mueller died last night.
He was 81 years old. He had a wife who loved him for sixty years. He had two daughters, one of whom he met for the first time in Hawaii, in 1969, on a few hours of military leave, before he got back on the plane and returned to Vietnam. He had grandchildren. He had a faith he practiced quietly, without performance. He had, in the way of men who have seen real things and survived them, a quality that is increasingly rare and increasingly mocked in the country he spent his life serving.
He had integrity.
And tonight the President of the United States said good.
I have been sitting with that word for hours now. Good. One syllable. The thing you say when the coffee is hot or the traffic is moving. The thing a man who has never had to bury anyone, never had to sit in the specific silence of a room where someone is newly absent, reaches for when he wants the world to know he is satisfied. Good. The daughters are crying and the wife is alone in the house and good.
There is more to say. A lot more. About the men who stood next to him. About the wife who said nothing. About what it costs a country when this becomes the weather.
