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.

n 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.

n 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.

Do government leaders not believe them?

n 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. 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 be continuing.

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.