As a rule, when Donald Trump publishes abhorrent content on his social media platform, the responses from his Republican allies fall into one of three categories. Many pretend they haven’t see what the president wrote, while others say something along the lines of “Americans knew what they were getting into when they elected him.” Others still actually endorse Trump’s incendiary missives.
But when the president responded to the deaths of Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele Singer Reiner, by attacking one of the victims, suggesting the filmmaker brought on his own slaying with his criticisms of Trump, something unusual happened: A variety of GOP voices, including some in Congress, agreed that the president had gone too far in his lack of basic human decency.
In a normal White House, a president would see the pushback from his own ostensible allies and realize he’d made a mistake (although in a normal White House, the comment never would have happened in the first place). In this White House, Trump acted as if he’d never heard the old expression about quitting while behind.
At an unrelated event in the Oval Office, a reporter reminded the president that “a number of Republicans” had denounced his statement related to Reiner and asked, “Do you stand by that post?”
The smart move would have been for Trump to dodge the question and change the subject. He did not, however, make the smart move.
“I wasn’t a fan of his at all. He was a deranged person as far as Trump is concerned,” the president said, referring to himself in third person. “He said he liked, he knew it was false — in fact, it’s the exact opposite — that I was a friend of Russia, controlled by Russia. You know, it was the Russia hoax, he was one of the people behind it.”
For good measure, the Republican added, “He became like a deranged person, Trump derangement syndrome. So I was not a fan of Rob Reiner at all in any way, shape or form. I thought he was very bad for our country.”
For now, let’s not dwell on the fact that Trump’s Russia scandal was not, and is not, a “hoax,” and no matter how many times he pretends the controversy has been discredited, Trump is wrong. Let’s also overlook for now that Reiner was not “one of the people behind” that scandal, making this a weird line of attack. Instead, let’s focus on the fact that Trump welcomed an avalanche of criticism from the left, right and center by condemning a celebrated artist immediately after learning of his death and, given an opportunity to make things better, made a conscious decision to make things worse. Trump is who he appears to be: a small and petty man, incapable of empathy or grace, obsessed with his grievances, unaware of what it means to be “presidential” and unable to control his worst instincts. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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