Bulwark Takes - Trump Responds to the Rob Reiner Family Tragedy With Cruelty

Episode Date: December 15, 2025

JVL and Sarah Longwell give their takes on Donald Trump’s ghastly response to the murder of Rob Reiner and his wife Michele. From victim-blaming to self-obsession, Trump turns a horrific family tragedy into a fantasy about “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” exposing the moral rot and hypocrisy at the heart of his presidency. Exclusive $35 off Carver Mat at https://on.auraframes.com/BULWARKTAKES. Promo Code BULWARKTAKES

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please contact Connix Ontario at 1866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Hello, everyone. This is JVL here with my best friend, Sarah Longwell, publisher of the bulwark. And, you know, as happens, we're recording with bad news. On Sunday night, Rob Reiner and his wife were found murdered in their Los Angeles home. As we are taping right now, we have word that their son has been arrested, but the police haven't made any announcements yet. The thinking seems to be that their son may have done. this, allegedly. But again, it's all very unclear. We're here because the President of the United

States, Donald Trump, decided to weigh in this morning. And Sarah, you have not seen this, this tweet on Truth Social, so I'm going to read it to you. Okay. 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, Michelle, reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind-cripling disease known as Trump derangement syndrome, sometimes referred to as TDS. He was known to have driven people crazy by his raging obsession of 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 Robin Michelle rest in peace. You know, even by, even by Trump standards, that is pretty, uh, that is pretty disgusting. In what, what human takes something like this and makes it a, a about himself, like Trump making it about himself, but also, like, they're in the middle of a deep family tragedy. And like you said, we don't know. I saw the reporting about the sun earlier. And the People magazine who, I mean, so grand assault, but they did no caveats in their reporting. Like, they announced it saying that it was.

And so he's also then, like, it is a wild misinformation. Like, it's like a lie. He was, he's acting like. Like. Blaming their murder. on them for having made people angry by being so mean to Donald Trump. I want to just read a couple other tweets

that I saw on Twitter last night shortly after the news of Rob Reunner's murder was released from just various maga types, from Joey Salads. As you can see, the right doesn't celebrate the death of those on the left, Brett Weinstein. Notice that the American right is not celebrating Rob Reiner's murder

I see post after post honoring this remarkable contribution to our culture, despite his striding to brace progressive lunacy in his later years. From Jack Posobiac, Pizza Gate, Jack, you won't see people on the right celebrating the horrific murder of Rob Reiner and his wife compared to the left's reaction to Charlie Kirk's murder. Hmm. One person did. Now, that person happens to be the president of these United States.

So I feel like that counts a little more than like some school teacher in Kentucky talking to a private Facebook group and saying something terrible about Charlie Kirk. This is the president of the United States. And we did have an organized campaign in which the vice president of the United States encourage people to snitch on anybody in their private lives who they may have heard not properly genuflecting about Charlie Kirk's murder. And here's the president. I just, one difference thinking out loud about the nature of Rob Reiner's work was, right, he produced movies that everybody has seen that many of us feel a real sort of fondness for. I mean, he did, he did when Harry met Sally. He did stand by me. He did misery.

His sort of cultural contributions were through films that all of us sort of know and love. And then, yeah, he was somebody who was then outspoken against Trump in more recent years. And in fact, like Bill did stuff with him. All of us actually, like he did, he was somebody who wanted to work with people who were speaking out against Trump, which is, which was incredibly. incredibly generous of him at a time when so many other people were unwilling to be out there on it. But he wasn't as a first order, a political actor, right? He sort of wasn't in the public sphere broadly as somebody who like did politics. And so, and frankly, it looks like this, this horrific murder is not relevant to politics.

I mean, it seems like it has nothing to do with it. Right. That's the other thing, right? The president making this about politics or like even these guys being like, well, he won't see the right. Blaming the victim for his own murder and then saying the reason he did it was because he was disrespectful to Donald Trump. That's what he's doing in a thing which, again, seems to have nothing to do with.

And again, like, this isn't, I'm not, I'm just as I think, like, the difference between how people react has something to do with the cultural space that these people occupied, which was very different from one another. And so, like, it's sort of weird to come out and be like, the right isn't saying anything. And I'm like, this guy was just a, he was a director and actor. So it's a, as opposed to the way that people feel about people who are in the political sphere. Like, they're going to talk about them differently. It's ghastly, right? And ghoulish and also insane and also wrong. Again, I mean, just

wrong, right? I mean, if, and wrong in the sense of like, it's just disconnected completely from the reality of it. It's in a make-believe version. It is not the case. We think that this has anything to do with Trump or that it was motivated in part by anything. It's just fantasy land from them. Bullwark takes is sponsored by ORA frames. We're now getting down to the wire and holiday shopping season. Hanukkah's already started and you're getting close to that window for Christmas. That window's closing, basically. It's time to get serious with ORA frames. And I just got my own in the mail. It adds a touch of home to my desk here at the bulwark can catch a glance at all my favorite people and all the memories that I've compiled

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My girl, Archer Taylor Green, tweeted about Trump's truth, social thing, said it was horrible. Thomas Massey said it was, says it's horrible. Thomas Massey says regardless of how you felt about Rob Reiner, this is inappropriate. and disrespectful discourse about a man who was just brutally murdered. I guess my elected GOP colleagues, the VP and White House staff will just ignore it because they're afraid. I challenge anyone to defend it. That's from Massey?

That's from Massey. Oh, that's good. That's great. I second his challenge. What does J.D. Vance think about this? What do you like to tell us? Jen Ellis said, this is not appropriate. That's, you know, so there, again, there are some people in there.

I don't see a bunch of electives except for Massey. and Marjorie Taylor Green. This is, you know, so you, you were like, hey, Sarah, you want to jump on and talk about this Trump tweet? And I was like, I haven't seen it. I don't know. I'm doing something else. But I, I, you're going to read it to me.

And I, as I sit with it, like, this is, this is a kind of thing that actually could be damaging to him because it exposes how like soft his brain is getting. Like, you and I talked about this on Friday on the secret podcast about, like, like, you and I talked about, like that one of the things about Trump is that sometimes his instincts can be really good like his oftentimes his sort of cultural instincts are really strong when he jumps in on things that people are talking about that again this is not in the political sphere this shows that his instincts are starting to like really rot on that like this is there's like and it's good that some people are condemning him but everybody should condemn him. this is so straightforwardly disgusting, but also, like, it is insane, like insane in the real way. Right. Like you said, like, it is not, this person's not in control of their judgment.

If Rob Reiner was shot by an unbalanced maga type at a no king's protest where he was talking with, then, like, it would still be evil and stupid, but you could say, okay, well, I mean, you can see how you could connect the dots from the, like, you know, if you really wanted to be tangentious about it. But this is not that. I want to go the other way, though. I think that this may be a case where Trump does understand where the id of his base thinks. Because I think there are probably a lot of people in America who would like to say this sort of thing about Rob Reiner because he was a bad person and had bad thoughts about Donald Trump.

But they know they're not supposed to and they know you're supposed to. and they know you're supposed to do thoughts and prayers and here he just comes out and says the thing. Kind of like John McCain being, you know, I like guys who weren't captured, right? They want somebody to say it. They know they're not supposed to. They want him to say it. I think

this is for all the people who are not really political, who would be horrified by this, they'll never see or hear it. This will be swallowed up by some new outrage five days from now. Right? Like the, like the

the jumbo jet. You know, just like, what? He's accepting a $300 million jet. And then like five days later, it's like, yeah, you know, well, now he took a billion dollars in crypto. I do wonder, you know, Rob Reiner, I don't know, I don't know what his sort of cultural, what the feeling is toward him or how, like I bet, I'm sure like 25 year olds don't really know who Rob Reiner is. but a lot of people do, and I do think this is very, like, I know what you're saying, and I think that it's probably correct for that really hardcore percentage of people who love when Trump is so awful. He's transgressive, right?

Yeah. I don't know, though, that they're like son murdering that, again, allegedly, this is the story that's. They loved it when they talked about Pelosi getting a. attacked by the dude with the hammer. Yeah, but again, I just, again, this is one of those, like, all of this stuff is just, you know, disgusting and, but it like, also, like that, that was like a political thing, um, right? That is about people getting, this is like a, it's all a tragedy. I, maybe, maybe it's not even worth separate, trying to separate this in one's head,

but it's like, why is the president weighing in on this except to dance on their graves? Like, that's what it feels like. And you're right that there was joy in the Paul Pelosi attack. And like the way that people often talked about Charlie Kirk was sort of like, I'm not sorry. And I think all of that is contemptible because like just don't say anything. But the president dancing on the graves of people because they didn't like him right now in a story that is about just like a gruesome murder. It's like 12 hours old. you know, like it just happened.

It's not even a... It is lunacy. It's... And I don't know if I agree with you that it will be gone in five days. And this is one of those things, like, this is one of those things where only if we let it. Only if we let it. This should be, this, this is a, it's a moment like to highlight for people how out of control Donald Trump is.

How gross and indecent. I mean, look, I know. I know. I know we know all this. I just can't imagine being the president of the United States and ripping off a tweet that's like, hey, too bad these guys got murdered because he was such a Trump had Trump derangement syndrome and hated me. Oh, well. It's where we are. If you want more great news like this, hit like and subscribe.

follows on the feed we'll be back there'll be more there will be more terrible news tomorrow not to sorry i know you're trying to close but like it comes on the heels of just an absolutely gut-wrenching weekend of the bondi beach uh shooting bondi bondi and and then the the shooting at brown like it just there are weekends and times where like it feels like the wheels are coming off. This is one of those. And it is one of those. Yeah.

Good luck, America.