Remembering Rob Reiner
In honor of the legendary filmmaker, Firing Line rebroadcasts an interview from 2019 with previously unaired material.
I was shocked and devastated to learn of Rob and Michele Reiner’s deaths. I first met them in January 2010 in Judge Vaugh Walker’s Court room in US District Court for the Northern District of California where we observed arguments in Perry v. Schwarzenegger—the case that would ultimately overturn Prop 8 in California. It was an unexpected partnership: former Bush Administration’s solicitor general Ted Olson had teamed up with Democratic legal icon David Boies to make the constitutional argument in favor of marriage equality.
What I didn’t know, sitting next to the teddy bear of a man who was as engaged and aghast by the witnesses testimony against same-sex marriage, is that he’d been part of the kitchen cabinet that brought the two former Bush v Gore legal opponents together.
Rob, I came to learn over the years, wasn’t the shallow Hollywood liberal the right would characterize him to be—he was smart, strategic, purposeful and deliberate in his political activism. It was an honor to work with him on marriage equality, to appear with him on Real Time with Bill Maher, and to host him on Firing Line when the program launched. He and Michele were always kind and gracious together and I count myself blessed to have crossed paths with them both in this life a little bit.
Here’s an artist rendering of that first week that I met the Reiner’s in Chief Judge Walker’s court room. I find myself wanting to hold on to the Rob Reiner I was lucky to get to know, and I feel so grateful to have this episode of Firing Line to hold onto. This captures Rob exactly as I knew him: warm, accessible, honest, sincere and kind to the core.
I began this interview of Firing Line with him in 2019 reflecting on this moment in court together, and the remarkable alliance of Olson and Boies.
“The fact that they teamed up basically took the politics out of the issue,” said Reiner. “And what [Olson] said to me is that he viewed marriage as a very conservative idea that is the bedrock of conservative principles that a married couple should be allowed to, you know, to be able to be together and to have a family. So that was, to me, an eye-opener.”
While Reiner was known for his films, he was also very vocal about politics. In this interview, we discussed his decades of political activism, his concerns about threats to American institutions, and the health and future of American democracy—much of which has turned out to be very prescient.
At the time of the interview, he told me that President Trump is “a great huckster. He’s like the best snake oil salesman ever,” and “poisonous for this country.”
“There’s no guarantee that democracy survives forever,” he said. “There’s no guarantee. It’s just, we’re just people and laws. So if you destroy the structure, you destroy the laws, you could wind up with an autocracy. And that’s where we’re headed right now.”
He also questioned whether American institutions could survive a second term under President Trump.
“I do think that, hopefully, the institutions will hold. But right now, what you have is a president who is thumbing his nose at the rule,” he said.
“I’m nervous about it,” he said. “Right now, we’re being tested.”
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A good interview. The things that deeply disturbed Rob Reiner are coming true-Donald Trump and his sycophants are trying to destroy American democracy.
RIP Rob and Michele.