Among the many reasons that President Trump’s attack on Rob Reiner before the shock of his murder at the hands of his own son had subsided was stupid (as well as unpresidential and cruel) was its ignorance of the Streisand Effect. The completely predictable reaction of the Trump Deranged, always seeking a new metaphorical drum to beat, and the similarly inclined Axis of Unethical Conduct, ensured that the President’s gratuitous Truth Social post would trigger an eruption of outrage that will fuel attacks on the President’s character for months, perhaps reaching into the mid-terms.
For this to really work, of course, Reiner must be elevated to near saint-like status, and sure enough, that’s what is going on. The higher Reiner (he was a wonderful, flawless man, we are now being told) and his films ( one of his movies is a favorite movie of everyone, one article claimed) can be pushed up the Cognitive Dissonance scale, the lower Trump goes by attacking him. Trump is first and last a salesman; how could he not know his gratuitous outburst would deeply wound his “brand”?
Among other gifts to Trump’s political enemies. this Cognitive Dissonance Scale botch makes defending or even continuing to support the President perilous. If you link yourself to President Trump (based, as it must be based, on his policies and actions rather than his character) by defending him you are simultaneously proclaiming your opposition to “The Princess Bride,” “Stand by Me” and “When Harry Met Sally” and the unassailable murder victim who made them.
This, in turn, poses the real danger that Trump’s revolting post will prove to be a tipping point, that last, tiny, thing that makes the Jenga tower fall or Mr. Creosote’s stomach explode as it does after eating the “wafer thin” morsel offered him in the clip above from “The Meaning of Life.” Trump’s stupid, mean words may well tip public opinion against his whole Presidency permanently and completely. If so, it will undoubtedly be the most trivial verbal tipping point in U.S. political history. By comparison, George Romney saying he had been “brainwashed,” President Ford saying in a debate that the Soviet Union did not dominate Eastern Europe, or President Carter claiming in his debate with Ronald Reagan that he consulted daughter Amy on nuclear weapons policy seem positively earth-shattering.
And yet if attacking a recently slaughtered director crushes Trump’s chances of holding off the Far Left’s siege on American values and core individual liberties, it may prove to be the most consequential moment in his Presidency.
Additional points:
- Stipulated: Trump’s Truth Social post was horrible, mean, cruel, incompetent and despicable. However, it had no substantive effects other than to make people feel badly, both for the Reiners and their family and about Donald Trump. It was not conduct. It did not affect policy, the economy, or international relations.
- Also stipulated: The post harmed the Presidency itself, not just Trump’s chapter of it, but the institution and the office. Trump has been scarring and debasing the office with his words and behavior since 2017, and as I have tried to explain, this has consequences that will last far after he is gone. It is every President’s duty to maintain the dignity and public respect of his office, maintaining the mythic image that George Washington so deftly created. Playing the role of President of the United States is an equally important function of the office’s occupant, as crucial as fulfilling the Constitution-bestowed duties of Chief Executive and Commander in Chief. Donald Trump has never accepted or understood that.
- The defenses offered by those desperately spinning to minimize Trump’s self-inflicted wound are all the same: “tit for tat,” “Reiner had it coming,” “Trump fights back and that’s admirable,” and “the director said worse things about Trump than what Trump said about Reiner.” I read a substack someone sent me with the note that it was someone (named Jack! ) making a serious and concerted defense of Trump’s Truth Social projectile vomit. I knew what the essay would contain before I read it. It is a compendium of all the worst false and unfair statements Reiner had made about Trump. It doesn’t matter. Trump is President. He is by definition “punching down,” but in addition to that, most people know Rob Reiner only as a director and actor who had been recently murdered. The article ends,
“….Trump’s ’s been saying the things we’ve been thinking but have been too polite to say. In the short term, polite is good politics. In the long term, polite has allowed the “politically correct” to use our politeness and our correctness against us. Trump may be something of a bully, but he has been a necessary one, and in Trump’s America, despite the Cassandras, it is still safe to call the President a fascist or even to tell fart jokes.”
If that’s the best defense, the prosecution rests and laughs doing it.
- Meanwhile, the New York Times is having a Rob Reiner festival. Columnists are referencing Trump’s post even in columns not about Trump’s post, as Nick Kristoff does today. ‘Here’s a national problem, and did you know Trump said bad things about a murdered director?’ There’s “What Rob Reiner Told Me the Last Time We Spoke,” extolling Reiner as the progressive heir to Norman Lear, and, of course, a lovable human being (unlike Trump.) Stephen King, who has tweeted terrible things about the President himself, has an essay about how much he loved “Stand by Me,” Reiner’s film version of King’s “The Body” : “Why I Hugged Rob Reiner After Watching ‘Stand by Me.’” Part-time NYT conservative Bret Stephens weighs in with “Our Petty, Hollow, Squalid Ogre in Chief.” Boy, wait until he dies in a chainsaw murder and Trump posts about him. Then the Times has a roundtable discussion among four Trump-hating opinion writers talking about how much they love Reiner’s movies. What do his movies have to do with political commentary? How are these four pundits suddenly film reviewers? It’s pretty obvious: the more Reiner’s films can be elevated in a political context, the more he is seen as a benign American whose presence on the cultural scene was a blessing to all, the worse President Trump looks…you know, like an “ogre.” Who wants an ogre in the white House? Who wants to support people who follow ogres? How can anyone respect someome who hates “The Princess Bride”?
Donald Trump did it to himself.
Ethics Alarms 
What happened to the Reiners is of course tragic, but his canonization is a manipulation of the reality that he was, is and has always been a “meathead.”
Only this guy is a meat head!
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Wait… Wait… Rob Riener was meathead! :-O
President Trump often acts like a ten year old boy, instead of a man with the maturity and wisdom of a senior citizen.
Indeed. In a previous century, such a thing could be endearing. British ambassador Cecil Spring-Rice once cautioned someone about TR, “You must understand that the President is about six.”
Instead, we have profoundly unethical (but funny!) plaques adorning the wall of Presidents in the White House that could have been inspired by 2 A.M. rants on Truth Social.
Regarding THAT observation, I can relate. I have long held that maturity is a myth. Many people grow old, but few really grow up.
I first heard that from my good friend and college professor thusly: “Bill, some people don’t grow up, they just get older.” I thought he’d coined that maxim himself!
Just don’t see it as a tipping point. How many Trump voters give a rat’s ass about Rob Reiner or his oeuvre? I found him insufferable from his “All in the Family Days.” Trump’s follow up post where he said Reiner was bad for the country is correct. This too shall pass. The key to holding onto the House is driving Trump voter turnout in an off-year election. I can’t imagine he and his administration don’t know that and I suspect they’ll have him campaigning non-stop starting very soon.
I think you underestimate the power of genuine dislike. If this stupid incident causes people who have tolerated Trump to suddenly say, “Hey! This guy really is a cruel, rapid asshole! Maybe he really does hate foreigners and brown people and that’s why he’s deporting illegals! maybe he really is a racist, and that’s why he’s killing DEI!” then he’s toast. I hope not, but I think it’s very possible that this does it. He’s ducked a lot of these, like the ‘why don’t they go back to where they came from” outburst, and his mocking that guy with cerebral palsy.
I agree with both Old Bill and JM here — I think this COULD be a tipping point for some people per JM), but not for many (OB). As JM notes, this really has nothing to do with policy, which has been the basis for the support from many voters who also had an otherwise dim opinion of Trump the person. I suspect more Trump voters will turn against him based on their experience of the economy (which of course can differ from many macro indicators of economic health–if you are personally struggling to pay rent and buy groceries that sucks) than anything else.
For MTG the tipping point seems to have been the flip-flop on the Epstein files, coupled with her general frustration about Congress being on extended forced vacation to prevent action on same.
For some there will be no tipping point — they will remain loyal to the end and beyond, whatever that end turns out to be the 2028 elections or some earlier date if his cabinet turns against him (which I think will happen before 2028). Some MAGA types have too much invested in their devotion to the man to ever turn against him.