Donald Trump freezes while others attend to a guest who collapsed in the Oval Office. Photo; Andrew Harnik. Getty

By Bob Gaydos

Freeze!

We had a game we played when I was a kid that involved one person turning his back to the group, closing his eyes, counting to 10 and stopping, looking over his shoulder and yelling “freeze”!

If he saw you move, you were out.

Donald Trump would’ve won every time.

Thursday, a photographer caught the quintessential photo of Donald Trump. Surrounded by a group of pharmaceutical executives and their guests in the Oval Office, the “leader of the free world“ froze when one of the guests fainted behind him.

As others, including Dr. Oz, rushed to help the man, Trump stood immobile, looking simultaneously dumbfounded and irritated that someone had dared to intrude on his spotlight.

As others attended to the guest, Trump stood behind the Resolute Desk, staring straight ahead, unable to show concern for someone in distress. This was someone invited to Trump‘s office, to the house he is in the process of destroying in the name of remodeling. His guest.

Nothing. Clearly, no empathy and no clue what to do. In other situations where he has no clue, which is most of them in his current position, he merely starts talking, rambling, lying, making jokes, making a sales pitch for how he is the smartest, best, wisest, toughest of them all, whoever they may be. But this time he had no words.

And, clearly, nothing in his 79 years on this planet that had instructed him on how to react compassionately to someone in distress.

A statue. Unthinking, uncaring, unfeeling, unbelievably unknowing. Donald Trump, frozen in time for all to see.

This really is who he is, people. His mental capacities have clearly been failing for some time now, but I’m not sure a fully functioning Trump with all his mental capacities intact would have reacted differently. His actions as president demonstrate that he is immune to others’ suffering. Sometimes, he  seems to enjoy it. He just doesn’t care. He apparently never learned how.

He couldn’t even fake it.

***

(The guest, invited by one of the pharmaceutical companies in attendance, reportedly had fainted from the heat in the oval office, apparently a recurring issue. Reports said he was fine after being attended to.)

By Bob Gaydos

Charlie Kirk

The headline says it all. All, that is, on which we all can agree.

I stayed out of the Kirk killing maelstrom over the weekend because I learned early on in my 23 years of writing daily newspaper editorials that it’s really important to have all the facts at hand before offering an opinion. Newspaper publishers used to insist on it. It kept them from being embarrassed or sued.

Times have changed. The Internet, social media, Trump, MAGA have all made timing more important than truth. Get your message out quickly to control the narrative. Spin. Lie. Distort. Grab on to rumors and hope for the best.

And now we know certain things. I’ll try to keep it brief because I’m as tired of the chaos as I think most of you are and the Epstein files have still not yet been released, lest we forget.

We know Charlie Kirk was a young man who  founded a group called Turning Point, USA and made a fortune with a podcast promoting Trump’s MAGA agenda and holding “debates” with other young people challenging them to “prove me wrong.” Of course, no one ever proved him wrong, but his debate opponents did offer him an opportunity to spread his right wing, misogynistic, divisive  Christian nationalist message to other young people. He opposed abortion and spread false information during the Covid crisis. He described empathy as a “made up” term and waste of time, especially when applied to victims of mass shootings because they were the price needed to pay for a Second Amendment right to bear arms.

Ironically, Tyler Robinson, 22, is accused of killing Kirk in Utah, a state that allows the carrying of firearms openly on college campuses, which is where the shooting occurred during a “Prove me wrong” debate. Despite Kash Patel’s claim that the FBI did a great job in tracking and arresting Robinson, we know it was the young man’s father who turned him in. After several days of wild speculation on motive and attempts by Trump, ever divisive, and other MAGA Republicans to blame Democrats, it was reported that Robinson was raised in a conservative Republican household and was introduced to firearms at a young age. He was also active on rightwing gaming and social media sites. He is on “special watch” status in prison. We know all this.

We also know that violence of any sort has no place in political debate and that, while both liberal and conservative actors have been responsible for political violence in this country, the great majority have come from the conservative side.

We know who Charlie Kirk was through his own words. He left a history. No need to tiptoe or whitewash. Nor is it time to call for retribution. No, this is the time to call for calm debate, a lessening of violent political rhetoric, a review of gun control laws and, yes, empathy for the family, especially the children, of Charlie Kirk.

We know all of this, and yet all we really know for sure right now is that Charlie Kirk is dead.

Prove me wrong.