In this episode of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words,” Victor Davis Hanson and Jack Fowler discuss the tragic murder of director-activist Rob Reiner and his wife Michelle, and the unfortunate reaction by President Donald Trump to the slaying.
Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of a segment from today’s edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words” from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to VDH’s own YouTube channel to watch past episodes.
Jack Fowler: We are back with “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words.” Victor, as we discussed before we started recording, a few issues relating to [President] Donald Trump and maybe lump them all together.
Of course, the most prominent one that’s out and the most current one today is his Truth Social post about Rob Reiner, hardcore leftist, but a movie director, many popular movies and famous to some of us boomers more so as Meathead from “All in the Family.” He and his wife were allegedly murdered by his son, who was very deeply troubled, long-troubled kid …
Victor Davis Hanson: He was a very talented, I think people forget that we call him Meathead, but he did do, I think, “When Harry Met Sally” and “A Few Good Men.” “A Few Good Men” was a good movie, especially that it had the unintended effect.
Remember, Jack Nicholson had that outburst, “You can’t handle the truth.” And it was supposed to show a deranged military, but he inadvertently made Jack Nicholson sort of, I don’t know, a counter-hero because people would quote that all the time, “You can’t handle the truth,” but not in the context in which Reiner intended.
He was a very vocal man on the Left, but I always—since I was a kid from my parents, my grandparents, and classical literature and Christianity—always followed the dictum nihil dicare nisi bonum de mortuis. “Don’t say anything unless it’s good about the recently dead.”
So, when the Truth Social posting from Trump comes out, and he says he died because of Trump Derangement Syndrome or the anger, I don’t know if he’s referring to he thinks the son was angry at his father’s politics. I doubt that seriously. I don’t know where any people in Brentwood who are pro-Trump, people of any mental state.
But the point is this: I think that’s what you were hinting on is you can’t get angry. I can get angry. You can get angry. We’re angry at all those people like [Reps.] Jasmine Crockett, Ilhan Omar, who said terrible things about Charlie Kirk after he was dead. But you have no moral credibility if you condemn that and you don’t condemn what Trump said.
And because he said something right after the death, and it wasn’t just the death, it was kind of a violent and grotesque death like Charlie Kirk’s. He was shot in the neck and the Reiner’s throats were slit by their own son.
That’s something of a Sophoclean tragedy.
At this time, something is wrong with the Trump circle. And what I mean by that is under no circumstances when you have very, very sensitive matters should he ever tweet because what he’s doing is he’s ruining all the goodwill that is accruing to him by his counterrevolutionary and successful program.
And then he puts the onus … what is [White House press secretary] Karoline Leavitt going to do now? She’s going to go out in front, and she’s going to try to answer questions on the economy? No, she’s not going to have any questions, but “What do you think about Rob Reiner?”
Now, that’s a lose-lose situation, as it should be because she’s either going to say, “Well, Rob Reiner was a very crazy, obsessed anti-Trump,” and they’re gonna say, “Have you no decency? He’s dead, he was murdered, he was grotesquely murdered.”
Then what is she gonna say? “Well, we wanna send condolences to the family,” and they’ll say, “But he didn’t do that.”
So, I think what they’re going to have to do is have some kind of, I don’t know what, I don’t know Trump apologists, but he’s gotta do something because what is happening with these tweets, and I know he’s gone through all of these things. I wrote a book about it that’s coming out.
But you can’t throw away all these solid achievements by tweeting because what you’re doing is you’re losing the independent voter. And the president is going to submit something, and there’s going to be someone that he trusts, but somebody of sterling reputation who’s going to say, this hurts you or it doesn’t hurt you.
And if it hurts you, that’s not going to go out. Otherwise, he’s going to tweet away his accomplishments.
You don’t criticize people when they die, and especially you don’t criticize people who die violently, and you don’t criticize people in Oedipean fashion that are killed by their sons.
It’s just a family tragedy. And I was not a big fan of his. He didn’t bother me like he did a lot of people because he always attacked Trump. He attacked Trump all the time, but there were—
Fowler: Rob Reiner.
Hanson: Yep. I don’t think some of his things were very good, but I do think he made two or three good movies. I really thought his father, who lived to be, I think, 98, Carl Reiner, was very talented.
And he was part of a culture in Brentwood. If anybody’s driven through that neighborhood or visited there, it’s the most upscale, one of the most upscale in California. It’s all left wing, very big homes, O.J. [Simpson]’s former area. So. it is what it is, as they say.
You can disagree with what he said, you can do things, but I just remember very carefully everybody on the Left seemed to be ghoulish and revel in Charlie Kirk’s death, and he didn’t. He didn’t. He said something that was nice about him, how tragic it was.
And the sad thing about what I’m saying is it’s not that Trump’s not capable of it. He’s got a very kind side. He calls people up. When he sees people grieving for their children who have been killed overseas, he doesn’t look at his watch like [Joe] Biden. He looks at them. He calls them up. He’s worried about them.
I have a lot of anecdotes of people who have called me about Trump and said, “You know, I thought he didn’t care, but you know, I talked to this guy whose mother died and needed a burial, and he paid for it.”
Or, “I knew these guys were going to serve a special thing, and he knew they were going to not have tips as what, and he just went out and opened his wallet and gave him money.” I hear that all the time.
So, he needs to just get out of the news cycle.
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