Presley Gerber passed away at the age of just 27 on September 20 at a rehab center, where he was undergoing treatment for the addiction and mental health issues he was so outspoken about during his short life.
In her post, Gerber, 25, shared her experience of grief, and poured out her love for her departed brother.
Gerber wrote:
“Prez, i don’t have the words. and maybe the tiny mercy is that we don’t need them all along."
"Words fail and words subtract and words summarize and words always lack truth. And how naive of me to believe that language could transcend grief.”
She wrote that she has read several books on grieving since September 20, but none of them have provided "the answers" to help process "the magnitude of losing you."
She went on to say:
"You know how much i loved being your sister. It has always been, and will forever be, my favorite thing about myself."
"I came into this world with a white-knuckle grip around you. i had more love for you than i knew what to do with."
"And now that it has nowhere obvious to go, I’m certain it’s going to swallow me whole.”
For anyone who's ever lost someone, especially someone young, that about sums it up.
If the words don't make it obvious the Gerber siblings were close, the images Gerber included in her post certainly do.
In one adorable video clip, the pair are seen dancing together as little tots. In another photo, they gaze at the ocean together, taking in the waves as if they'd like to run in together.
Gerber went on to further describe her grief with a clarity that is almost palpable even to a stranger.
“To say loving you was the easiest thing in the world would imply that it required any effort at all. I was born loving you. I will die loving you. There was never anything else.”
In the comments, many of Gerber's celebrity friends poured out their hearts toward her and her family, and many memorialized Presley in their own ways.
@lisarinna/Instagram
@michellevisage/Instagram
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@dovecameron/Instagram
@parishilton/Instagram
@reesewitherspoon/Instagram
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Gerber finished her post with a reference to Nobel-winning physicist Richard Feynman's famous 1946 love letter to his wife upon her death, which read in part:
"You, dead, are so much better than anyone else alive... My darling wife, I do adore you. I love my wife. My wife is dead. P.S. Please excuse my not mailing this — but I don't know your new address."
Gerber's version read:
“My darling brother, i do adore you. I love my brother. My brother is dead. And this party sucks so bad without you, prez.”
That pretty much says it all.
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They've labeled programs that help the poor, sick, elderly, or disabled as communism and socialism. They've labeled programs that combat bigotry against the marginalized DEI and gone out of their way to target immigrants, women, Muslims, and the LGBTQ+ community.
But surely the "pro-life" party would support feeding children. Right? Turns out pro-life is really pro-forced birth and once a fetus becomes a viable child outside the womb, it's on its own for food, healthcare, housing, or anything else an infant needs to survive.
Republicans across the United States have repeatedly stood in opposition to free school lunch programs.
Not understanding the disconnect, Jared Shult of Austin, Texas, asked on Meta social media platform Threads for a Christian conservative to explain it to him.
Shult posted:
"Can a Conservative Christian explain to me why you are against free lunches in schools for kids?"
The post quickly went viral.
MAGA Christians or their family members responded, as well as critics of their version of Christianity.
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As many of the critics of the MAGA mindset shared:
“A Democrat would feed 100 people for fear that one person may starve. A Republican would starve 100 people for fear that one person was fed that didn’t deserve it.”
"And quote scripture while depriving them."
Based on the answers to Shult's question, that sounds about right.
When Tommy asked El-Sayed if he would "disavow the Muslim Brotherhood," El-Sayed replied:
“Sure. Yeah, absolutely. Why are you asking the question?”
After Tommy told El-Sayed he'd asked the question because the Muslim Brotherhood is "a terrorist group," El-Sayed dug deeper:
“But what are you implying? Do you assume that I wouldn’t?” ...
“You’re asking the question because implicitly you assume that I’ll have dual loyalties, right? You assume that somehow I wouldn’t disavow, or that I’ll have some higher order allegiance than the Constitution.”
Independent journalist Marisa Kabas, who writes from the left, subsequently identified “Tommy” as the son of Republican political strategist Timmy Teepell, whom she characterized as a right-wing plant.
Kabas reported that Teepell worked for Bobby Jindal, first as a congressman and later as Louisiana governor, from 2004 to 2011, and managed Jindal’s unsuccessful 2015 presidential primary campaign. He joined the political consulting firm OnMessage in 2011 and helped Josh Hawley win election as Missouri attorney general in 2016, before assisting Hawley’s successful U.S. Senate campaign two years later.
As footage of El-Sayed's exchange with Teepell circulated online, Crawford shared the following in a since-deleted post on X:
“Tommy, thank you. I had to watch this twice to catch Dr. Abdul El-Sayed’s nanosecond, ‘yeah, absolutely,’ response. His subsequent uninterrupted diatribe proving your exact point is the kind of spectacular self-own is the kind ppl only dream about triggering. Congrats.”
You can see the post below.
@janCBS/X
The backlash was swift.
In response, Crawford deleted her post and acknowledged it had violated the network's standards:
"Earlier, I tweeted a video from an Abdul El-Sayed town hall. I deleted that tweet because it was a violation of CBS News standards. I apologize."
You can see her post below.
But critics were not buying it.
Sounds like this is what we can expect now that CBS is under editorial control by the right-wing's Bari Weiss.
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