Trump Goes to Eleven

And Rob Reiner may get the last word in after all.

From the Reiner film This is Spinal Tap

Rob Reiner is already messing with Trump from beyond the grave, but the president has only himself to blame. On Sunday, he posted one of the most despicable takes imaginable on Reiner’s death, and somehow managed to make it all about himself.

Classic malignant narcissist behavior, say mental health experts. And when asked about his comment later, Trump doubled down and called Reiner “deranged” even while referring to himself in the third person. Irony is on life support.

I’m actually not that interested in what Trump had to say, though I’ll cover it for context. But I am quite interested in how the right has reacted to his words. From what I’ve seen, it’s another sign that Trump’s bruised and bandaged hand no longer has such a firm grip on the party.

This one goes to eleven

After news of Reiner and his wife Michele’s brutal murder broke, the right leveraged it to score political points.

“You won’t see people on the right celebrating the horrific murder of Rob Reiner and his wife,” posted Jack Posobiec. He told readers to “Compare the Left’s reaction to Charlie Kirk’s murder,” even though there were no Democratic officials who had actually celebrated.

But then Trump climbed in his AI fighter jet and dropped shit all over Posobiec’s argument. In a post on Truth Social, Trump claimed Reiner and his wife died from the “anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME.”

While he posted this on his own social media platform, it got reposted and amplified by the Rapid Response 47 team on Twitter, one of the White House’s official social media accounts.

And with that, a crazed statement by Trump had once again put the right on the defensive and called into question whether they were prepared to descend further into the abyss along with him.

Stand by me?

This time, the right wasn’t prepared to excuse Trump for being Trump. The reactions to the post on his own social media platform told the story well. Here were the top four comments beneath Trump’s post, all with thousands of likes from the MAGA base.

The White House’s official “news” mouthpiece broke with him as well. Hours after the post, in a remarkable segment on Special Report, a regular show on Fox, contributor Howard Kurtz criticized Trump and his post as “well beneath him and beneath the office.”

And he wasn’t alone. All other members of his panel agreed with him. Host Bret Baier played a clip of Reiner saying he had been horrified by Charlie Kirk’s murder. Then, as Mediaite reported,

Baier noted to Fox contributor Guy Benson that Trump has received “pushback” from other Republicans.

“As he should,” Benson replied. “There’s a time and place for politics and for trolling. A man being viciously murdered along with his wife, allegedly, at the hand of their own son, is not that time or that place. And for the president to have put this out the way that he did achieves nothing and reflects poorly.”

Baier reminded Fox viewers that Trump had reiterated his comments when asked about them in the Oval Office by calling Reiner “deranged.” Baier then asked Axios’s Stef Kight about that moment.

“Trump has continued to double down on his comments despite hearing from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle who have been pretty clear in condemning the president’s tone,” Kight replied. “And it is unfortunate to have the president of the United States taking a tragedy like this and inserting politics into a situation as sad as the one that led to the Reiners’ death, especially after the year we had, especially after political violence has been such a big issue this year. Whether it was the killing of the state lawmakers in Minnesota earlier this year to the killing of Charlie Kirk, this has been a conversation.”

That this conversation took place on Fox is notable. Open criticism of Trump is rare to see there, but the network built a permission structure for its audience to do so on this issue.

Other well-known Fox personalities added their condemnations. “No words. I mean, ‘disgraceful,’ ‘appalling,’ ‘atrocious’ — those are words, but they don’t do it justice,” said Fox legal analyst Andy McCarthy on Twitter.

I’ll have what she’s having

MAGA women have become a thorn in Trump’s side, and some took to the internet to voice their disgust with his post.

“A man and his wife were murdered last night. This is NOT the appropriate response,” tweeted former Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis. “The Right uniformly condemned political and celebratory responses to Charlie Kirk’s death. This is a horrible example from Trump (and surprising considering the two attempts on his own life) and should be condemned by everyone with any decency.”

“A father and mother were murdered at the hands of their troubled son. We should be lifting the family up in prayer, not making this about politics,” wrote Rep. Stephanie Bice (R-OK).

Despite MAGA threats on her and her family for having crossed Trump earlier, Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene continued to not hold back. Quote tweeting Trump’s post, Greene wrote,

Rob Reiner and his wife were tragically killed at the hands of their own son, who reportedly had drug addiction and other issues, and their remaining children are left in serious mourning and heartbreak.

This is a family tragedy, not about politics or political enemies.

Many families deal with a family member with drug addiction and mental health issues. It’s incredibly difficult and should be met with empathy especially when it ends in murder.

(I must confess, I keep wondering if MTG is on MDMA with all her sudden focus on empathy and wonderment at the views of the north Georgia mountains from inside an Amtrak train.)

That word doesn’t mean what you think it means

Speaking of “empathy,” the right’s fingerwagging over Kirk’s death never quite got that concept right. Enforced empathy isn’t empathy at all, of course. But following Kirk’s assassination, MAGA nevertheless swung into action to demand it. Those who once derided “cancel culture” proved quite eager to seek retribution for ever having been shamed online as racists, homophobes or misogynists.

The right proceeded to report thousands for having mocked, or even insufficiently mourned, Kirk’s death. Many were fired from their jobs. A witch hunt began inside the Pentagon to root out any anti-Kirk staffers. And one poor man named Larry Bushart, a resident of Tennessee, even went to jail for a month over what felt like a completely innocuous post:

The one that got Bushart arrested was a meme featuring President Donald Trump and the words, “We have to get over it.” That quote, the meme explained, was made by Trump last year after a school shooting at Iowa’s Perry High School.

Posting the meme, Bushart wrote: “This seems relevant today …”

Honestly, this was what half the country wanted to throw back at Trump after his dismissiveness of the families’ pain in the wake of that horrific shooting.

The right’s policy of “First Amendment for me not thee” was made even starker when the regime began revoking visas for some visitors and temporary residents accused of celebrating Kirk’s death. Said Secretary of State Marco Rubio at the time,

America will not host foreigners who celebrate the death of our fellow citizens.

Visa revocations are under way. If you are here on a visa and cheering on the public assassination of a political figure, prepare to be deported. You are not welcome in this country.

It must be said that Rob Reiner was as much a “political figure” as Charlie Kirk. Both were highly outspoken supporters of their parties, both raised a lot of money for their causes, and both created content for their audiences to urge them to get involved and stay engaged.

So what makes Trump’s statement somehow okay, while others got deported for far less offensive and disrespectful statements? No one has a good answer to that.

You can’t handle the truth

Take Squeaker Mike Johnson. His normal response to any bad action or statement by Trump is to claim he hasn’t seen or doesn’t know anything about it. But he could hardly do that here with Trump’s viral post leading the headlines and proving that the President, in the end, has no decency.

So what’s a scared little man to do? When asked about the murder of the Reiners, Johnson delivered some platitudes and Bible verses, very standard fare. But when asked specifically about Trump’s post, Johnson simply ran away without answering as reporters shouted after him.

CNN’s Manu Raju also tracked down Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) to see if he had anything to say about Trump’s post. And to no one’s surprise, Thune declined to address it.

“I don’t have much more to say about it, other than it’s a tragedy, and my sympathies and prayers go out to the Reiner family and to their friends,” Thune said when Raju asked if the post was appropriate.

The American presidents

This failure in GOP leadership stands in stark contrast to the sincere compassion we saw from past Democratic presidents. I want to post them here to get the bilious taste of Trump’s post off our political palates.

Wrote Joe Biden,

“Jill and I send our deepest condolences to everyone whose lives were touched by Rob Reiner and Michele Singer Reiner’s extraordinary contributions. We take solace in knowing their work will live on for generations to come.”

And from Barack Obama,

Michelle and I are heartbroken by the tragic passing of Rob Reiner and his beloved wife, Michele. Rob’s achievements in film and television gave us some of our most cherished stories on screen. But beneath all of the stories he produced was a deep belief in the goodness of people—and a lifelong commitment to putting that belief into action. Together, he and his wife lived lives defined by purpose. They will be remembered for the values they championed and the countless people they inspired. We send our deepest condolences to all who loved them.

Long after 47 is just so much orange dust, the works and legacy of Reiner will live on, beloved by millions, even while MAGA voters slink away and GOP officials begin to claim they never supported or liked Trump in the first place.

That day will come, but it will take time. I take heart and try to practice what Reiner once said, which could describe the entirety of our democratic project. “It’s a very slow process. Two steps forward, one step back. But I’m inching in the right direction.”