\n<\/p>\n
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.<\/p>\n
The president is the only person in the United States with the megaphone to speak to the nation and guide them through moments of tragedy. This morning, Donald Trump used that megaphone to hijack the apparent murder of the director Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele Singer Reiner, in service of his political grievances.<\/p>\n
\u201cA 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,\u201d Trump wrote on Truth Social. \u201cHe was known to have driven people CRAZY by his raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump.\u201d He then closed, incongruously, \u201cMay Rob and Michele rest in peace!\u201d<\/p>\n
The post was nauseating even by Trump\u2019s standards. Though Reiner was an outspoken Trump critic and longtime progressive activist, no serious reports have tied the deaths to his politics. Police have arrested the Reiners\u2019 younger son, who had spoken publicly about struggling with addiction and homelessness. This makes Trump\u2019s post seem even stranger. Did he invent this idea in the hope that a Trump supporter had killed the Reiners? Was his post intended as a threat to other anti-Trump people, warning that speaking out might get them killed? Is he simply extraordinarily cruel?<\/p>\n
Looking for a considered meaning in Trump\u2019s words might be a wild-goose chase, though. The simplest reason Trump posted this is the same reason he posts anything: The man cannot resist making everything about himself, even if it\u2019s the heartbreaking murder of a beloved artist in an alleged domestic dispute. If \u201cTDS\u201d is the tendency to become irrationally obsessed with Donald Trump and project that obsession onto everyone else, then somebody is indeed deranged, and it wasn\u2019t Rob Reiner.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s post creates some pungent ironies. \u201cYou won\u2019t see people on the right celebrating the horrific murder of Rob Reiner and his wife,\u201d the Trump ally and conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec wrote on X last night. \u201cCompare to the Left\u2019s reaction to Charlie Kirk\u2019s murder,\u201d Posobiec added. That\u2019s an illuminating comparison. When Kirk critics brought up his more inflammatory rhetoric after his assassination in September, some prominent figures on the right, including the attorney general, accused them of hate speech, and scores were fired from their jobs. (This came at the same time that many right-wing pundits were celebrating Kirk as a champion of free speech.) Evidently the same standards don\u2019t apply to Trump\u2014though the replies to his post on Truth Social suggest some revulsion even among the kind of devoted fans who hang out on his personal social network.<\/p>\n
Trump has never shined in moments that call for dignity and restraint. Yesterday, discussing the mass shooting at Brown University on Saturday, the president seemed cold: \u201cThings can happen,\u201d he said. Empathy does not come naturally to him, even when it would be politically beneficial. Visiting Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria during his first term, Trump gave us the indelible image of tossing paper-towel rolls to beleaguered survivors.<\/p>\n
This is what makes Trump\u2019s post about the Reiners not just despicable and cruel but also bad for the country. In moments of national mourning or trauma, a president can seek to bring people together: Think of Ronald Reagan\u2019s remarks after the Challenger disaster, George W. Bush\u2019s speech atop the rubble at Ground Zero, or Barack Obama\u2019s eulogy at the memorial for victims of the Mother Emanuel massacre. Absent these presidents\u2019 genuine ability and instinct to inspire unity, a leader can fake it, offering at least a boilerplate statement. If nothing else, they can just keep quiet.<\/p>\n
But not Trump. He finds the most divisive way to insert himself. The president began this year with another lowlight: After an air crash over the Potomac River in Washington, Trump was quick to point fingers (DEI was, absurdly, one of the supposed culprits) and slow to console. His choices deny the country a chance to mourn, and they take moments that could be unifying\u2014surely Americans of all political views can agree on the greatness of When Harry Met Sally and The Princess Bride\u2014and turn them into opportunities for anger.<\/p>\n
Which is, in effect, Trump\u2019s political project. As James Mattis, Trump\u2019s first defense secretary, said in June 2020, \u201cDonald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people\u2014does not even pretend to try. Instead, he tries to divide us.\u201d Some signs have emerged of Americans rejecting this attitude, including huge \u201cNo Kings\u201d protests and Trump\u2019s sinking approval rating. But by other measures, Trump has been successful. The country is sad, angry, and divided\u2014coming to resemble its president more all the time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. The president is the only person in the United States with the megaphone to speak to the nation and<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37577,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[2432,4646,13176,13175,81],"class_list":{"0":"post-37576","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-social-issues","8":"tag-blames","9":"tag-murder","10":"tag-reiner","11":"tag-rob","12":"tag-trump"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37576"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37576\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/37577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}