President Donald Trump’s mockery of the slain Hollywood star Rob Reiner earned a stern rebuke from The Atlantic’s John Dickerson, who scorched the MAGA leader for using grief as a “plaything.”
Dickerson wrote Monday that the violent deaths of Reiner and his wife ignited a moment of national reflection, as much of Reiner’s work was woven into America’s collective experience, with films like “The Princess Bride,” “Stand by Me,” and “When Harry Met Sally.”
“What was not called for—in the moment, in the psychology handbook, or in the traditions of the American presidency—was Donald Trump’s response,” wrote Dickerson, formerly a CBS News correspondent.
On Truth Social, he mocked Reiner and invoked his repeated “Trump Derangement Syndrome” attack, baselessly implying that the actor’s political criticism led to his own killing — all while Reiner’s son faced custody on murder suspicion.
“Trump did something worse than mock. He blamed a murdered man for his own murder, while the Reiners’ own son sits in custody on suspicion of killing them. Trump used a family tragedy against a dead man. This was not merely irresponsible, nor simply another example of norm-breaking rhetoric. It actively widened the breach. He didn’t affirm human boundaries; he punctured them to display dominance. Grief became a plaything. Shock became his permission,” Dickerson wrote.
He noted that Trump is often referred to as “Daddy” on the right — a comparison at odds with his behavior, Dickerson said.
“In times of shock, a parent does not mock the wounded or ridicule the dead. A parent steadies. A parent signals safety, a backstop. Trump instead signaled that nothing is protected, and no shared floor exists,” he said.
He concluded that Trump misses the moment when the U.S. needs “orientation.”
“He destabilizes it. He does not merely break norms; he erodes the conditions that make shared meaning possible. Where Reiner built a national cultural space—worlds we could all inhabit together—Trump dissolves it. He takes the scaffolding we’ve constructed and sets it on fire,” he wrote.
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