The Daily Beast87%
How Larry David Helped Rob Reiner Get the ‘Last Word’ on Trump 77%
By Nick Schager0%
7/3/2026, 9:30:00 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 23 faulty reasoning types, including Negativity Bias, Appeal to Emotion, and Pessimism Bias, with Biased Writer Voice as the most egregious example at 62.8% saturation with 394 hits. Analysis detected 2,250 faulty-reasoning hits from 627 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 68.8% and a BS Rank of 77% (5,037 of 21,887 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 77.00% of the article peer group.
Rob Reiner was one of Donald Trump’s longest-running and harshest critics, calling him “the single most unqualified human being to ever assume the presidency of the United States” and “mentally unfit.”
When Reiner and his wife, Michele, were murdered in December 2025 (allegedly by their son Nick), the president showed his true colors by slamming the celebrated filmmaker and comedian as “a tortured and struggling, but once very talented movie director and comedy star” who suffered from a “massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind-crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME.”
Nonetheless, in their war of words, it’s Reiner who gets the last laugh—courtesy of Larry David.
On this week’s episode of Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness, David’s Barack Obama-produced sketch-comedy series timed to America’s 250th birthday, the Curb Your Enthusiasm creator grants the All in the Family funnyman and When Harry Met Sally auteur one more chance to stick it to Trump via a scene that takes direct aim at the commander-in-chief’s litany of failings and crimes.
Ostensibly Reiner’s final screen appearance, it’s a veritable shot from beyond the grave—aided not only by David but also by another of Trump’s great pop-culture adversaries, Jimmy Kimmel.
As David’s longtime collaborator, Jeff Schaffer, who directed the episode, told the Daily Beast’s Obsessed podcast in an episode set to stream next week, “I love that in this weird way, Rob gets the last word.”
And if his message “spoils a sad octogenarian’s weekend, so be it.”
It also helps underscore the lifelong friendship between David and Reiner, who was an original producer on Seinfeld and has been credited for helping “save” the show from cancellation in its early days.
Reiner later appeared as himself on Curb Your Enthusiasm, and David was spotted going into the Reiners’ home after news broke of their horrific double murder.
The new sketch features Reiner as George Washington, who addresses a crowd to announce he will not seek a third presidential term.
According to narrator Samuel L.
Jackson’s preface, Washington did this because “his commitment was to democracy instead of power” and, also, because he feared that if people voted according to political-party loyalty instead of in the common interests of the nation, it would lead to the rise of “cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men.”
That very concern is the subject of this witty sketch, as Washington’s announcement inspires David’s spectator character to ask what would happen if a future president didn’t follow his lead and ran for a third term, to which Reiner’s Washington replies that Congress would be the bulwark against such an offense.
Alas, David’s character is unconvinced, querying, “What if there’s some a--hole in office—some narcissistic pr--k—who doesn’t follow the Constitution?”
This “imaginary” scenario doesn’t alarm Reiner’s Washington, who comforts onlookers by stating that Congress and the Supreme Court would prevent such Oval Office disobedience.
David, however, is undeterred, saying, “What if the Supreme Court is a bunch of yes men and Congress is a bunch of p---ies who care more about party than country?”
Moreover, he suggests, the public might support him because it’s a collection of “dupes,” at which point a fight breaks out between attendees that echoes our current, hostile cultural-political divide.
Though one can envision Reiner himself delivering this takedown in real life, Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Happiness is all the funnier for letting him play the straight man to the end.
Still, in what are likely his closing on-screen moments, he describes our predicament in two succinct words that encapsulate his entire feelings about Trump and the damage he’s wrought: “We’re f---ed.”
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Speakers
1speaker5.7%attributed speech591writer words
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100%flagged-word coverageJeff Schaffer
36 attributed words100% of attributed speech96% writer coverage
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Analysis
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