‘Where Was Any Grown Up?’ Morning Joe Crew Rips White House Staff ‘Enabling’ Trump in ‘Double Down’ After Rob Reiner Attack

MS NOW’s Morning Joe crew slammed the White House staff and President Donald Trump’s close advisers for “enabling” him by “doubling down” on his widely criticized attack on filmmaker Rob Reiner – hours after his murder – and even as his most ardent supporters call him out.

The celebrated director was found dead on Sunday afternoon alongside his wife, Michele Singer Reiner, from apparent knife wounds. Their 32-year-old son, Nick Reiner, has since been arrested and is being held on $4 million bond.

Trump responded to news of Reiner’s death, posting on Truth Social, that the director had been killed “due to the anger he caused others” and was “deranged”, blaming what he called “TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME.” Later on Monday, Trump said: “I wasn’t a fan of his at all. He was a deranged person as far as Trump is concerned.” The White House Rapid Response communications team also boosted the post on X.

On Tuesday’s Morning Joe, the team reviewed the widespread backlash against the post from the president’s own base.

“Where was any grown-up in the White House? Where were they? Where were they?” host Joe Scarborough asked. “They had to know that even for this president, who aggressively goes after his critics, who’s broken barriers time and time again, but even for this president with the low standards that he’s allowed to get by on, somebody in that White House had to know this would cause conservatives, this would cause his most fierce supporters in the MAGA base, to be deeply disturbed at how much it would damage him.”

He added: “This is not about hurting libs. This isn’t about libs. This is about Donald Trump hurting Donald Trump, Donald Trump hurting the White House, Donald Trump hurting the MAGA base.”

“There’s no one in the White House to tell him and that’s by design,” co-host Jonathan Lemire replied. “Social media account is the president himself or Dan Scavino, who’s one of his longtime advisers. They’re the ones who have the keys to this. But someone in the White House response staff, they put it out. The reflection, the reflexive instinct, is just to fight, to double down on whatever the president says. This should not be a challenging moment.”

Lemire reflected that the “only defenders” he could find of the president’s comments were “really hardcore” loyalists like Laura Loomer, continuing that clips of Reiner’s compassionate response to conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s murder had gone viral since the news.

Co-host Mika Brzezinski joined in: “When the president doubled down on this, with his words, there seemed to be a shift from maybe his first presidency. Sometimes he would say things that are a little bit off, but there’d be kind of a twinkle or a like a sort of ‘I’m joking, but I’m not.’ And there was something different here, like a change. And I don’t know what it is. Who in the White House was supposed to be there to stop him?”

“Maybe they can’t?” she asked.

“They can’t, or they don’t want to,” co-host Willie Geist added, continuing: “They like being close to power and they’re just enabling it. And they know there’s nothing they can say to him that will stop him at this point.”

Watch above via MS NOW.

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