Trump’s Depraved Rob Reiner Comments Spark Rare Bipartisan Backlash & Critical Right-Wing Media Coverage
Using a media coverage analysis tool, I discovered how Trump’s comments about Rob Reiner crossed a moral line so stark that even right-wing media and Republican figures recoiled.
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Just when you think Donald Trump can’t sink any lower, he sends out one of the most disgusting posts he’s ever sent. Trump’s comments about the deaths of Rob Reiner and Michele Singer Reiner were downright depraved and indefensible.
President Trump has taken a deeply sad family tragedy resulting in the death of a beloved Hollywood legend and sought to make it all about him. You’ve all likely seen the post. Trump claimed that Reiner died “reportedly due to the anger he caused by others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction … known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME.”
When given a chance to backtrack on his comments on Monday, Trump doubled down, telling reporters, “Well, I wasn’t a fan of his at all. He was a deranged person as far as Trump is concerned.”
I’m running out of non-expletive, journalistic ways to describe Donald Trump’s depravity. It hadn’t even been 24 hours since Nick Reiner, Rob and Michele’s son, had allegedly murdered his own parents, and Trump couldn’t muster even a moment of decency. He’s a petty, small, amoral man unworthy of any position of leadership, let alone the presidency.
Trump’s behavior would get him fired at any entry-level or managerial job in America, but Republicans continue to back him to lead the most powerful office in the world. The President is supposed to be held to the highest standard of human character, not the absolute lowest.
Republicans need to reckon with the fact that they’ve empowered a vindictive, fragile egomaniac who is a corrosive moral rot on the American psyche. After these comments, it appears this moment may have triggered introspection in some Republicans.
It’s always the simple, easy-to-understand cruelty that breaks through. Trump’s Rob Reiner comments were so straightforwardly repugnant that they garnered widespread, bipartisan backlash. There were, of course, some defenses from his die-hard sycophants, but the nearly universal sentiment was this: What Trump said was deplorable.
Many Republican lawmakers spoke out against Trump’s post. Republican Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Thomas Massie, Mike Lawler, Don Bacon, and many right-wing figures expressed their opposition on social media.
Even outspoken Trump-supporting celebrities like Rob Schneider and James Woods spoke out against Trump’s comments, calling them “outrageous” and “infuriating.”
After seeing this near-universal backlash, I wanted to analyze how right-wing media covered it. Surprisingly, there wasn’t a lot of spin.
In an effort to get a bird’s-eye view of this coverage, I once again used Ground News. It’s a news site and app that analyzes articles from 50,000 news sources daily, tracks their bias, compares headlines, and showcases how each outlet is covering a given story, or if they’re covering it at all. It’s an excellent tool I use and have recommended to students for years in my media literacy and anti-disinformation guest lectures.
Ground News made it easy for me to analyze this coverage. It found that 436 total news sources covered Trump’s Rob Reiner comments. Unlike many of Trump’s biggest controversies, where right-wing media will outright ignore the story, Ground News’ Bias Distribution analysis found that coverage was pretty evenly split between left-leaning, center, and right-leaning outlets.
When drilling down into the specific coverage, many right-leaning outlets covered Trump’s comments without spin and, in some cases, covered the backlash in their initial framing.
The New York Post framed Trump’s comments negatively right in their headline: “Rob Reiner drove people ‘crazy’ with ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome,’ prez says in ‘insane and disgraceful’ post.”
Outlets like The Daily Wire, on the other hand, covered the backlash to Trump’s comments extensively, but also cited some of Trump’s defenders.
One of the most powerful rebukes to Trump’s comments came from the conservative National Review. Jim Geraghty, Senior National Political Correspondent at the National Review, wrote a searing piece headlined: “Trump’s Appalling Reiner Reaction Is a Sign of Something Deeply Wrong.”
In the piece, Geraghty wrote about the importance of talking about this in a partisan era and delivered a razor-sharp condemnation of Trump’s total lack of morality:
“The president of the United States is a hateful raging lunatic with all the empathy of Jeffrey Dahmer… I’ll let you decide whether the term psychopath or sociopath better describes the president’s actions… This president cannot discern moral right and wrong through a person’s actions, like a normal human being. Donald Trump’s entire worldview of whether someone is a good person or a bad person depends entirely on whether that person offers praise or criticism of Trump…
You can prefer the president’s policies. You can say you’re happy you voted for him over Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, or Kamala Harris. But what you can’t say is that Donald Trump is a good and decent human being.”
That is one of the most incisive takedowns of Trump’s depravity I’ve read from a conservative voice. What makes it more impactful is the fact that I saw several conservative thinkers share this piece, including Fox News Chief Political Analyst Brit Hume.
There were also Trump voters who called into right-wing talk shows, like the Megyn Kelly Wrap Up Show, to express disappointment in Trump’s comments.
I’m not disappointed, because that would mean I was surprised or expected more of Trump. This has always been who he is. Trump’s critics have long detailed their disgust with his behavior. But it appears now, as he maneuvers through his second term surrounded by yes men, he is unleashing even higher levels of repulsive behavior that are beginning to shock his own supporters.
This pushback has been very good to see. Normally, when I do these coverage analysis pieces, I grow to anticipate right-wing blind spots and twisted coverage to carry water for Trump. That is not what I found this time, so I’m relaying my findings to you all with pleasant surprise.
There are some moments that just cut through the noise and hit at the moral core of human empathy. Trump’s horrific comments about Rob Reiner are one of those moments.
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You can use it as a casual news site and get a bird’s eye view of exactly how the biggest stories in politics are being covered, or as an investigative tool to catch disinformation campaigns in real-time.
I’m subscribed to their Vantage plan, which includes the features I used when researching for this piece. It’s been invaluable in helping me to understand the media landscape and quantify how the biggest developments are covered. It also tells you who funds each media organization, so you can make an informed decision about which companies you’re supporting.
I hope you check it out. We have to hold our media to a higher standard, call out false narratives when we see them, and take our media diet into our own hands.
You can find my past pieces where I used Ground News to analyze media coverage below:
Would love to see him tranported out of the White House in a STRAIGHT- JACKET. Might be coming soon.