Rob Reiner’s Legacy, Donald Trump’s Tweet, and AI

I came of age watching All in the Family, the pathbreaking TV show that gave Rob Reiner his start in television and prefigured current political fractures, featuring Archie Bunker, a working-class white guy from Queens, who expressed many of the same sentiments that are currently held, albeit in more extreme form, by current acolytes of Donald Trump. Reiner, as Archie’s son-in-law and nemesis, was counter to Archie’s homophobia, racism, and sexism. But Archie’s occasional bouts of self-understanding made it difficult to dismiss him completely. And Carroll O’Connor’s brilliant acting signaled to us that he was in on the joke.

I’ve seen many of Reiner’s films: Stand by Me, When Harry Met Sally, A Few Good Men, and, of course, the classic Spinal Tap. His films were often funny, but they always embodied a sense of humanity, which was also reflected in his acting and his public presence. His politics swung left, but he was never shrill or condescending toward those he disagreed with. He labeled Trump as a fascist with a simple of matter-of-factness that made it powerful.

When we lose an artist, whose work runs in parallel, in many ways, with our own lives, especially when they are lost in such a horrific way, it can feel deeply personal, as though you’ve lost a confident or a friend. I’ve been having that feeling about Reiner’s death.

So, when I read Donald Trump’s now widely circulated Truth Social tweet, I was angry, sad, and somewhat depressed that the President of the United State would stoop so low. Of course, what else would you expect from the man? As I read the actual tweet, however, I had a second reaction: Donald Trump did not write this.

Of course, the deranged viciousness was Trumpian. But the style was a bit too grammatical for a Trump tweet, and it deployed words that I don’t associate with him. The tweet states, for example, that Reiner died, or was killed “due to the anger he caused with a massive, incurable, mind-crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANAGEMENT SYNDROME.” Beyond the fact that this is an absolutely ludicrous idea, it just doesn’t sound like Trump.

“Massive, incurable, mind-crippling,” especially when strung together in a phrase, are not Trumpian. His rants are always short declarative phrases, using simple words, often in all caps, strung together with idiosyncratic uses of punctuation, such as dropping periods in where commas belong. To say that Reiner had a “raging obsession” with him and “with obvious paranoia reaching new heights” also does not sound like Donald Trump. It sounds like someone trying to sound like Donald Trump.

Compare the tweet with Trump’s follow-up statements to the press defending it. It’s classic Trump: “I wasn’t a fan of Rob Reiner at all in any way, shape or form.” He accuses Reiner of supporting the “hoax,” that Trump favored Russia, deploying one of his favorite words. Reiner was “very bad for our country.” How many times has he said that about someone he dislikes? And he said that Reiner “hurt himself career-wise.” “Career-wise” is again pure Trump. The truth is that Trump doesn’t have a large vocabulary, and he doesn’t speak in formally complex sentences. Given all this, I am pretty certain that he didn’t write that tweet.

You might ask, “So what? Who cares whether he writes this disgusting drivel?” I actually think it does matter. For one thing, if not Trump, who is writing these tweets? Given the recent Susie Wiles interview, which lays bare the complete chaos engulfing this White House, it could be anyone. It could be Stephen Miller. It could be Wiles. Or it could be a White House intern. And, if it is someone else, then why? Is it because Trump is bored, tired, or losing his capacities?

My own guess, and I admit this is highly speculative, is that the tweet was at least partially generated by AI. It has the smoothed out grammatical constructions that are an AI marker. It deploys three adjectives, divided by commas, that are a common AI form, and it features words that, in this case, are seldom used by the supposed author. (Then again, maybe I’m developing a kind of AI paranoia.)

Whether it was an aide writing the tweet or some chatbot, it indicates how idiosyncratic Trump’s actual way of speaking and tweeting is. His style of communicating is crucial to how he connects with his base. It’s the language of a marketer (in this case, a con artist), which is essentially what Trump is and has always been. It is often incoherent and even deranged, but he repeats the same words and phrases over and over again in a way that can sound compelling, even when it’s completely absurd. It’s a kind of populist rhetoric that feels direct and authentic to his followers, and it is unique to Donald Trump.

This points to how difficult it will be for someone else to pick up the Trump mantle and the uniqueness of his political pull. Clearly, neither JD Vance or Marco Rubio, anyone, or any computer program, will be able to replicate it. This, to me, provides evidence that MAGA, once Trump is out of the picture, will fragment, or collapse, given its utter dependence, not only on Trump’s presence, but on his rhetorical style.