Another tranche of sour economic data came down from the Bureau of Labor Statistics today. Jobs rose by 64,000 in November, but fell in October by 105,000, thanks in part to DOGE-induced federal layoffs that finally took effect. Worse: The economy is now losing blue-collar jobs—for the first time since the pandemic— and the unemployment rate ticked up more than expected, to 4.6 percent, the highest in four years. Happy Friday.

The President Is Morally Sick

by Mona Charen

Yesterday, the world reacted in horror to the news of the murder of Rob Reiner and his wife, apparently at the hands of their own troubled son. Donald Trump had a more unique response.

The post is deranged, pathologically narcissistic, crude, stupid, and cruel. No human adult outside a psych ward expresses such thoughts. To have them at all is evidence of a twisted soul.

A couple has been murdered in their own home, their throats slit. Rob Reiner was a Hollywood giant who played a huge part in American culture for half a century and brought pleasure to millions around the globe. One might think that Trump’s admiration for fame and money alone might have stayed his hand in celebrating this tragic crime. But no. Reiner was a Democrat and an opponent of Trump, so our commander in chief, who evidently fantasizes about the violent death of every critic, took time out of his busy TV-watching schedule to gloat that Reiner had been murdered because of his “raging obsession” with Trump.

Take a minute just to marvel at this. For most people, the idea of political violence committed by one’s own side is so psychologically uncomfortable that many would prefer to pretend it doesn’t exist. When such violence does break out, many prefer to retreat into comfortable lies rather than face the fact that their allies might stoop to such lows. And when the evidence is overwhelming that their confederates have done something despicable, they reach for crutches like “false flag.”

Trump is the opposite. So powerful is his thirst for political violence that he not only fails to recoil from it when it breaks out; he fantasizes that it’s taking place even when it isn’t. There’s zero reason to believe Reiner’s murder had anything to do with his political opposition to Trump. But the president says this is true for the same reason he says many false things are true: because he wants it to be true.

Has there ever been a simpler encapsulation of the Trump era? We suffer through daily reminders of the weakness of the president’s mind, but the United States has muddled along with other dim presidents. Where Trump occupies a category all his own is in his breathtaking moral depravity.

And witness the devoted cheering section who insist upon overlooking this man’s monstrousness. Trump’s immorality has been on vivid display for a decade, but the response by his defenders has always been to treat attention to the matter either as pure partisanship or as class condescension. For those whose minds were not nailed shut, however, the brutality of his actions comes as no surprise. Yes, a man who could rouse a crowd to murderous fury to attack Congress and his own vice president can assassinate people in boats, starve and kill hungry mothers and children in poor nations, pardon powerful drug runners, and send hapless immigrants to foreign gulags.

During these ethical swamp years, Trump’s denizens have fallen back again and aga