Observations on a Torrent of Bad News

Laura Hollis
Wed, 17 Dec 2025 17:32:26 -0800
Opinion

The past week has brought an unusual amount of bad news; so much that it's been difficult to focus on any one item before you're buffeted by the next horrific headline. Here are a few of my personal observations on some of these recent events.

1. Murder of Rob and Michele Reiner, and President Donald Trump's response

I still cannot grasp that Rob Reiner and his wife are dead; murdered in such a horrific fashion. Mr. Reiner was a talented comedian and a brilliant director whose films consistently displayed his deft touch with humor and his insights into the best of humanity.
Updated: Thu Dec 18, 2025

The past week has brought an unusual amount of bad news; so much that it's been difficult to focus on any one item before you're buffeted by the next horrific headline. Here are a few of my personal observations on some of these recent events.

1. Murder of Rob and Michele Reiner, and President Donald Trump's response

I still cannot grasp that Rob Reiner and his wife are dead; murdered in such a horrific fashion. Mr. Reiner was a talented comedian and a brilliant director whose films consistently displayed his deft touch with humor and his insights into the best of humanity.

Reiner's politics were spectacularly ill-informed; his diehard beliefs that President Donald Trump was a traitor and colluded with Russia were not only false, they were fed to him by the very people — Hillary Clinton, James Clapper, John Brennan and former president Barack Obama — who confected the story in the first place. Reiner's friends played him for a fool, and — I daresay — used him, his visibility and his platform in Hollywood to prop up their lies, including and especially with the Committee to Investigate Russia.

That is all unfortunate, but in the face of the unfathomable tragedy Reiner's family, friends and colleagues are facing, it is also irrelevant. Rob and Michele Reiner had their throats slit, their daughter Romy discovered their bodies, and their son Nick — a lifelong drug addict with a history of mental health issues — has been charged with their murders.

The only — only — proper public response by any human being to a tragedy of that magnitude is one of dignified compassion and respect. That is even more the case if a public comment is being given by the president of the United States. Alas, that seems to have been beyond Trump's capacity for restraint. Trump's social media post about Rob and Michele Reiner's death was appalling, suggesting that Reiner "passed away" as a result of his irrational hatred of Trump. What a load of rubbish.

One can support the president and his policies without excusing that breach of basic decency; it is inexcusable.

2. The attack at Bondi Beach

It is increasingly obvious that Jews are not safe anywhere: not in Israel, not in Australia, not in the United States, not in Europe. I don't know how many of these attacks have to take place before it becomes obvious to Western governments that Islam is incompatible with societies founded upon principles of democracy and Judeo-Christianity. Even when the day's events don't include a mass shooting, we still get to see attacks at European Christmas markets, disruptive protests at colleges and universities, and video after video posted on social media where practitioners of Islam declare their antipathy for Western countries and their intention to take them over and force conversion upon their citizens.

Do government leaders not believe them?

3. Fraud in Minnesota — and elsewhere

Stories about the billion-dollar (and growing) fraud in Minnesota are just the latest evidence of the extraordinary theft engaged in by so-called social service agencies and nongovernmental organizations. In Minnesota, billions of dollars were stolen by individuals — largely Somali — and used to buy expensive cars, luxury homes and expensive vacations. Some of this money was even funneled to overseas Islamic terrorist groups like Al-Shabaab. Where was the oversight?

This follows on the heels of the Trump administration's decision to shutter the U.S. Agency for International Development — finally — which has spent countless billions on questionable "development" projects like promoting transgender policies in impoverished nations. In 2024, it was discovered that USAID was spending half its aid funding on overhead. Criticism of USAID is hardly recent; the American Enterprise Institute was drawing attention to its questionable practices 20 years ago. But it takes that long to get anything done, and were it not for Trump and his administration, the waste and grift would still be continuing.

4. Revelations about FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago

According to emails released this week, the FBI did not believe it had probable cause to raid Mar-a-Lago, the Florida residence of Trump and his family but only did so under pressure from Biden administration officials in the Department of Justice. Just as was the case with the FBI's obtaining of a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant to spy on Trump during his first term in office, the "evidence" used to justify the search of Mar-a-Lago was uncorroborated (and, as with the FISA warrant, likely known to be false), and the search produced no evidence of criminality.

This makes the search illegal, of course. And it further exposes the "lawfare" and mass media propaganda efforts engaged in by high-ranking Democrats against Trump.

5. Where are the arrests, prosecutions, convictions, consequences?

Americans across the country are frustrated by the complete lack of accountability for the lies, the corruption, the fraud, the manipulation of the legal process that we're seeing exposed on a daily basis. The "Russia collusion" story was a complete hoax, the "investigation" of which cost the American public nearly $40 million; how many people have served time for that? Anthony Fauci lied — the United States was funding "gain of function" research at the virology laboratory in Wuhan, China — the likely source of a global pandemic that destroyed countless businesses, devastated families and damaged the education of a generation of schoolchildren; who has been arrested? Don't say that Fauci was pardoned; the bulk of the pardons issued "by" former President Joe Biden in the waning hours of his administration were done via autopen; who's been arrested for that?

We see people committing egregious crimes, stealing staggering amounts of taxpayer dollars, and eroding our constitutional right. And ... crickets. It is impossible to overstate the damage this is doing to public confidence in government and law enforcement. There need to be arrests, prosecutions, convictions and serious sentences imposed for all this corruption. Otherwise, we are hurtling headlong toward an ugly future as a failed state.