President Trump’s Truth Social post about the Reiner murders has all the usual suspects beside themselves in unctuous angst (keep in mind Trump nor any of his 77 million-plus voters are accused of this crime). I’d like to draw attention to a huge kernel of insight glossed over by most commentators so far. Let’s start with Trump’s full statement (which is something “The View” refused to do on air):
“A very sad thing happened last night in Hollywood. Rob Reiner, a tortured and struggling, but once very talented movie director and comedy star, has passed away, together with his wife, Michele, reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind-crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME, sometimes referred to as TDS. He was known to have driven people CRAZY by his raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump, with his obvious paranoia reaching new heights as the Trump Administration surpassed all goals and expectations of greatness, and with the Golden Age of America upon us, perhaps like never before. May Rob and Michele rest in peace!”
It may be obvious to objective readers why “Whoopi” didn’t permit “Sonny” to read Trump’s whole statement on “The View.” Only by taking certain phrases of his out of context can “The View” rail against Trump, instead of focusing on a uniquely dysfunctional family that the left has been telling us for 48 hours was exemplary and normal in all respects.
But I digress.
First of all, those raging against President Trump always refuse to view anything from from his standpoint. As much as anyone may admire Rob Reiner’s art and grieve his and his wife’s grisly murder (Michele did the cover photography for Trump’s best-seller The Art of the Deal; these people knew each other), we must assess the full Reiner legacy that goes beyond the early brilliance of his directing career (seven straight box office successes - unprecedented) and his magnificent comedic pushback against a cartoonish Archie Bunker in “All in the Family.” Plus, he outshone his father, Carl Reiner, something few siblings of celebrities rarely do.
How about including the following as part of his legacy: Rob Reiner’s originality, creativity, and worth, to The Industry took a nosedive at the very moment he became one of the ugliest, cruelest, and most dishonest, gladiators in the political arena. How could he possibly find time to create visionary new films which would appeal to all Americans when he seemed to be eating up all his waking hours and emotional reserves, abusing his status as an entertainer and Hollywood elite, demonizing people he politically hated by spreading – and adding his weight to – conspiratorial lies that have all been debunked in due time, with nary an apology afterwards.
Worse still, Reiner deliberately engaged in a crusade to strip Donald Trump of any humanity, and classified Trump’s entire Make America Great Again movement as an existential threat to the world, democracy, and especially, to America. Nobody can let Rob Reiner off the hook for using his public standing to deliberately abuse the truth.
It Wasn’t Just Business; It Was Personal
Now onto the personal: It was Rob Reiner who transgressed the public sphere and made this feud personal, perhaps with encouragement from Hollywood buddy Robert DeNiro. Asking a fellow human being (Trump) to wash away a decade of bitter, dishonest, and highly personal smears, with a goodwill funeral eulogy – something that certainly won’t be extended to the Trump family when the president eventually dies – is asking a lot, perhaps too much.
Turning the other cheek is not in Trump’s playbook.
Let’s get to the meat and potatoes of Trump’s statement. Reiner “was known to have driven people CRAZY by his raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump, with his obvious paranoia reaching new heights...”.
Here are the facts. Rob Reiner’s 32-year-old son Nick Reiner has been arrested and charged with butchering his mother and father. Nick has a long history of mental health issues driven by addiction to drugs and alcohol that go back to middle school.
Here’s what else we know: From before the Trumps rode down the Trump Tower escalator in 2015, the Democrat Party, corporate media, Hollywood, academia, Silicon Valley, most of corporate America, and high-profile mouthpieces such as Rob Reiner, have relentlessly engaged in what they knew - knew - was a dishonest campaign to gin up hate and fear. From 2015 to now, every major leftist institution has conspired to make a substantial majority of Americans hate Donald Trump and people who vote Republican. George Orwell‘s daily “Two Minutes Hate” shrinks in comparison to today’s 24/7 onslaught from all corners of the leftist culture.
Rob Reiner proudly stood at the tip of that crusader’s spear.
That’s a fact!
Agitating the Mentally Fragile… On Purpose
In addition to the personal hate directed at Trump and his supporters, there’s the blanket demoralization concocted by the left about life on this planet in general. Researchers have published studies on how the pervasively negative messages from left-controlled institutions have scared Millennials and Gen Zers to death. The usage of anti-depressants among those under 30 is at unprecedented levels. Ferocious lies about Nazis and fascism, the end of democracy, the planet is doomed, oceans are rising, America is systemically racist (all we can do is bury it), capitalism has not only failed but is evil, the future is doomed (but government is here to see that you won’t starve to death).
We don’t know if any of that had anything to do with Rob and Michele Reiner’s hideous death. But at least commonsense should tell us that Trump has made a very cogent point.
A full decade of spreading all this bitter fear, division, and hopelessness, couldn’t help but trigger something in those who were already mentally fragile.
Right?
But even if you erase the Reiner tragedy from the discussion, we’ve seen an explosion of behavior from left-wing adherents that range from violent to frightening to bizarre to cruel.
They twice tried to murder Donald Trump; they did murder Charlie Kirk; then they celebrated Kirk’s murder and mercilessly went after Erika Kirk, Charlie’s widow; they brag about excommunicating family members at Thanksgiving dinners; they’re desperate to sterilize and sexualize children; they gush over the cute murderers of Charlie Kirk and UnitedHealthcare C.E.O. Brian Thompson; they gush over them because they’re guilty; they support (victorious) attorney general candidates who openly and unapologetically wish death on Republican office holders and their children.
The perps involved justify this madness based on their self-righteous hate and existential fear of their enemies – the less-than-human people on The Other Side – a hate deliberately and carefully crafted out of lies by the Whoopi Goldbergs, Jake Tappers, Nancy Pelosis, and Rob Reiners, in our midst.
There’s only one man who straddles the chasm keeping the left from total power, and that’s Donald Trump. But there are consequences to such an unending, culture-destroying barrage of hate. When you’re provoking and scaring the **** out of mentally fragile and ill people, you can’t guarantee how the tipping point will manifest itself...
Where it will be directed, or if the monster you’ve created will turn on you.
Maybe Trump shouldn’t have said anything about Rob Reiner’s grisly demise.
But what he did say contained more than a grain of truth.
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Thank you, David for writing the truth. There’s something that never gets said. Which is that, in the view of people like Rob Reiner, Trump came out of their class and then became president — and they didn’t. They must destroy him! You know Gore Vidal’s saying “It’s not enough to succeed. Others must fail.” It’s absolutely how they feel to their core. People who believe the surface of their hatred for Trump, that they hate him because he’s an evil fascist have simply never been around those people. No, they hate him because he became president and they didn’t. All of this said, I wish Trump had handled his response to the murders of Rob and Michele Reiner differently.
Great post David. Reiner and all the others went after Trump, he only has responded to their attacks. If someone spit in your beer and you throw it in their face I would say your were justified. The outrage by the left ignores the spittle but concentrates on the response as if unprovoked.