Transcript: MTG Humiliates Trump over Reiner as MAGA Crackup Worsens |
The following is a lightly edited transcript of the December 16 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.
Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
As you may have seen, President Donald Trump offered a truly disgusting display in response to the horrific death of Rob Reiner and his wife. What surprised us, however, was the response to this. Marjorie Taylor Greene, of all people, offered a remarkably pointed and heartfelt reply to Trump. Other MAGA figures piled on as well. On another front, MAGA figures are warning Trump that the base is drifting away from him for a whole bunch of reasons. Even Trump’s own pollster is sounding the alarm about the MAGA base. And it appears Republicans are going to let the Affordable Care Act subsidies lapse, which will badly hurt working-class Trump supporters. So we’re starting to wonder, is MAGA hitting a breaking point, and what does this all mean for Democrats? We’re talking about all this with New Republic senior editor Alex Shephard, who’s been writing well about both Greene and the MAGA crackup. Alex, good to have you on.
Alex Shephard: It’s great to be back.
Sargent: So, Rob Reiner and his wife appear to have been murdered, which is an unspeakable horror. Trump, unsurprisingly, seized on this to claim they had died of “Trump Derangement Syndrome” and said Reiner’s paranoia had reached new heights amid Trump’s world-historical successes. Alex, that’s deranged even for Trump. But notably, MAGA has been quite critical of this.
Robby Starbuck slammed Trump for making their deaths political. Several other big figures criticized him, too. What do you make of that?
Shephard: I think it’s a couple of things. I think one is that, even by the demented standards by which we judged Donald Trump, this was a pretty despicable statement, and one that—it’s, in some ways, not shocking now to see Trump completely reframe a tragedy that has nothing to do with him but, if it involves someone that he detests—to suggest essentially that they deserved what happened to them, which is what that post did. But I think that there are a few things here.
I think one is that we’ve just been seeing—within this sort of larger spike in political violence that is directly tied to the rise of Donald Trump himself—that there has been a lot more debate over rhetoric itself. And I think on the right, there are some figures here who are at least acknowledging this and trying to cover their own ass, for lack of a better term, that they don’t want the most prominent Republican celebrating violence, even if it is nonpolitical—which this seems to be, it seems to be a family matter—because they rightly understand that it damages their credibility in talking about political violence more generally.
I think that’s one part of it. But I think the other part is that what we’re seeing over the last few months, particularly since the elections last month, is that Republicans are rightly realizing that they have attached themselves to a mad king, that people don’t like this guy. And I think what they especially don’t like is the correct sense that he is focused on personal vendettas, a White House ballroom, the sort of marble bathroom in the Lincoln Bedroom, and not on issues of affordability.
And so Trump saying something horrible about Rob Reiner’s murder only reinforces what most Americans already realize, which is that Republicans and this president in particular do not care about the problems that they have right now.
Sargent: Right, and I think what you’re getting out there is that these MAGA figures are starting to see—and I don’t know why it took this long, but whatever—that Donald Trump just doesn’t give a shit about the MAGA movement in any sense. He’s a megalomaniac only in it for himself—pure narcissism. I want to go to Marjorie Taylor Greene, though, who really stood out here. I’m going to read her whole tweet in response to Trump:
Rob Reiner and his wife were tragically killed at the hands of their own son who reportedly had drug addiction and other issues, and their remaining children are left in serious mourning and heartbreak. This is a family tragedy, not about politics or political enemies. Many families deal with a family member with drug addiction and mental health issues. It’s incredibly difficult and should be met with empathy, especially when it ends in murder.
Alex, that was very sensitively handled by Greene, even though she doesn’t directly criticize Trump. It stands as a forceful takedown of him just by virtue of the contrast she drew with him. You’ve been writing about her. What do you see going on with this in particular?
Shephard: Yeah, it sort of is like, you do not, under any circumstance, have to hand it to Marjorie........