Two Boys from the Boroughs: How Donald Trump and Rob Reiner Used Their Affluence in Ways that Couldn't be More Opposite
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Fred Trump gave his son his first job at his real estate business, where he became chairman of the business at the age of 25; Carl Reiner’s stature in Hollywood almost certainly opened doors in the entertainment industry for his son. Today, the two might be written off as nepo babies, which is always a pejorative.
Rob Reiner, though, used the advantages he was conferred through a fortunate birth to flourish as a prolific, respected artist of enormous range, to shine a light on injustices, and use his name and celebrity to elevate humanity. Compassion is stitched through his legacy. Donald Trump used the advantages of his birth – he was a millionaire as a child, as were his four siblings, thanks to his father’s funneling of his fortune to his children to avoid taxes – to further elevate himself and build a protective barrier around his swindling and grift. Being self-serving is his legacy. Rob Reiner, a lifelong, passionate progressive, used the wealth and access he gained as a beloved actor and then respected filmmaker to also take an active role in fighting for equality and justice his whole life. Donald Trump, conversely, used the wealth and access he gained through deceit, self-promotion and manipulation to become the biggest threat to democracy our country has known and make it as difficult as possible for those not born with the same advantages he was born with – whiteness, maleness, affluence – to succeed.
Being born into families with financial means does not predetermine that the heir has to be selfish, arrogant and greedy. It is not a fair basis for assuming the worst about someone. It is what those born into wealth do with those advantages that determine if that person is someone of character, a big-hearted mensch like Rob Reiner, or absent of character, a conceited user like Donald Trump.
It has not even been a week since Rob Reiner and his wife, photographer, producer and activist Michele Singer Reiner, were killed; their son, who is charged in the killings, has been in and out of rehab, struggling with addiction and mental illness since his teen years. Earlier that same day that the Reiners were killed, we in the Northern Hemisphere woke to the news of the Bondi beach massacre of Jews in Sydney, Australia on the first day of Hanukkah. It weighs heavily on me knowing that this may have been the tragic news Rob Reiner, a great humanitarian, a son of Jews, as guided by the spirit of tikkun olam (Hebrew for “repair of the world”) as anyone I know, heard before he left this earth. Tikkun olam is perhaps why his films are so infused with a love for the human spirit and why he used his position until his last day fighting for equality, as cofounder with Michele of the American Foundation for Equal Rights, funding the legal fight against California’s Proposition 8, which sought to revoke marriage equality in the state, as well as helping to found First 5 California, a landmark initiative that funds early childhood development programs through a tobacco tax. It is worth noting that Reiner’s mirror opposite, Trump, is using his administration to attack, weaken and possibly destroy Head Start, the anti-poverty initiative created in 1965 to allow families with less money access to a quality early childhood education for their children, which levels the playing field as they prepare to start elementary school, among other programs.
Again, these are causes and programs to make the United States more equitable and just. Reiner was not just talking and writing checks, though those things are important; he was actively doing the good work, which also modeled for other celebrities and people of wealth the value of making the world a better place, not sitting on the sidelines and tracking their crypto assets. Or, I don’t know, ruining lives, grifting and paying back your benefactors, off the top of my head.
Trump has done many terrible things in his lifetime, too many to count, but the wreckage he can inflict because of his increasingly unchecked power is magnified to a degree that is incalculable. It is by no means the worst thing he has said or done – invading our cities with armed thugs, gutting the social safety net and institutions like the FDA, waging a one-sided war against Venezuela – but his cruel, defamatory post about Rob Reiner the day after his death, when so many of us were already reeling from the news in Australia and now the tragic ending of a national treasure and his wife, felt like a dagger in the heart to me in a way that was personal, real and, quite literally, sickening.
Trump (or someone from his camp) wrote: “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 Michele, reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME, sometimes referred to as TDS. He was known to have driven people CRAZY by his raging obsession of President 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 Rob and Michele rest in peace!”
The punctuation and grammar are all his. He then doubled-down to the press at the White House and reiterated that Reiner, the peaceful man who was just slain along with his wife, was “deranged”. No empathy. No words of solace. No dignity.
I have written about this a bunch of times since because I am as devastated as I have ever been by the death of someone I don’t know in real life, but Rob Reiner was one of the good ones by virtually every metric. Rubbing salt in the wound of losing someone so beloved, a national treasure, who was still actively creating so suddenly and so violently is beyond just cruel. There is something seriously sick about Trump and the way his brain works. His post laid that all bare. Even some Republicans who reliably genuflect at Trump’s golden altar were taken aback by the sheer depravity of his words. (Even Speaker Mike Johnson apparently got the memo that he needed to say something and not just punt to feigning ignorance, but, of course, his words were weak and trite.)
I think I have exhausted all I wanted to say on this subject of what it feels like to have someone you are fond of, someone of the caliber of Rob Reiner, be defamed by the world’s biggest, most obnoxious and destructive bully but I did want to just say one last thing I learned while researching this. Rob Reiner’s famous father, Carl Reiner, was the son of poor Jewish immigrants. Through President Roosevelt’s Work Project Administration, or WPA, Carl Reiner was able to take a drama workshop that, as a 16-year-old working as a machinist, changed his whole life’s course. Carl Reiner went on to create, among other things, the legendary Dick Van Dyke Show and had a long and prolific career that rivaled the one of his son. Because of this New Deal-era program offered to people without the means to invest in exploring new careers, he got a leg up, and through that, he was probably able, directly or indirectly, to help his son get into rooms he otherwise would have been excluded from without that connection. Perhaps because of this simple but generous investment program, we have “The Princess Bride,” “This is Spinal Tap,” “Misery,” “Stand By Me,” “The American President,” “When Harry Met Sally,” and so many more cultural and artistic works that have made our lives richer, replete with messy humans captured with a warm, wise lens. It’s obviously not just his creative output, as Rob Reiner’s legacy to us all is one of understanding, kindness and building a more equitable world.
The WPA is exactly the kind of program Trump, his billionaire bros and MAGA army would have immediately dissolved when he became president if it were still around. No wonder Trump has such vitriol for Rob Reiner, as he was a man who used his advantages to elevate and advocate as well as enrich the human experience. There is nothing Trump, his benefactors and followers hate more than the traits Rob Reiner embodied: imagination, empathy and generosity. Reiner gave us beauty, comedy, dignity, curiosity and delighting in the human experience. Trump will leave nothing of real value behind, just wreckage and a cautionary tale. (I guess that last thing is of value.)
No wonder Trump hated Rob Reiner. Despite the similarities of their circumstances, they couldn’t have been more different.