Dwain Northey (Gen X)

The Moment the Red Hat Tilted Slightly to One Side

It finally happened. Not impeachment. Not indictments. Not the fraud, the cruelty, the mocking of the disabled, the casual flirting with authoritarianism, or the years of open contempt for anyone outside the faithful. No—the breaking point came when Trump managed to turn a moment of human tragedy (or what the internet assured them was one) into yet another performance art piece titled “Actually, This Is About Me.”

In this imagined moment, the MAGA faithful—battle-hardened veterans of excuse-making—watched as their leader responded to news involving Rob Reiner and his wife not with decency, restraint, or even silence, but with a rambling self-praise monologue. A statement so breathtakingly inappropriate it felt less like condolences and more like Yelp reviews of himself.

“Very sad. Very tragic. Nobody respected Rob Reiner more than me. I was always nice to him. He never thanked me. Sad!”

And somewhere, deep in the cavernous echo chamber where red hats are handed out like communion wafers, a single neuron sparked.

Wait… that was weird.

This, mind you, came after the Charlie Kirk saga—where Reiner, despite decades of being painted as the Hollywood Antichrist, had the audacity to say… nothing cruel. Nothing inflammatory. Nothing that could be clipped into a rage meme. He didn’t attack. He didn’t sneer. He didn’t even tweet in all caps.

Which created a problem.

Because the MAGA worldview depends on villains being loud, mean, and cartoonishly evil—so they can justify being loud, mean, and cartoonishly evil right back. And here was Rob Reiner, refusing to play his assigned role, while Trump—their guy—was out here turning grief into a mirror selfie.

That’s when the discomfort set in.

Not outrage. Not accountability. Just confusion.

Why wasn’t Trump being… human?

Why did every moment—every moment—have to be rerouted through his ego like a toll road?

Why did the supposed “strong leader” sound like a man yelling into a void, demanding applause at a funeral?

And most terrifying of all:

What if being cruel all the time actually isn’t strength?

This is the part where the MAGA faithful didn’t renounce him en masse or burn their hats in the town square. Let’s not get crazy. This was subtler than that.

This was the moment they said:

“I mean… he could’ve just said sorry.” “That wasn’t very Christian.” “Why does everything have to be an attack?”

Tiny cracks. Hairline fractures. The kind that don’t collapse the building—but do let in air. And light. And the horrifying realization that maybe—just maybe—you can’t build a moral philosophy on owning the libs and expect it to hold up when actual humanity is required.

Because cruelty is easy.

Mockery is easy.

Outrage is easy.

But decency? That requires you to care about someone else without first checking if they voted for you.

And in this strange, hypothetical moment—where the villain refused to be villainous and the hero refused to be kind—somewhere under a red hat, a thought formed:

What if being evil and mean… isn’t actually the point?

Now, will this realization last? Will it survive the next rally, the next grievance, the next all-caps post?

Probably not.

But for one brief, uncomfortable moment, the faithful saw it:

Not the liberal elite.

Not Hollywood.

Not the media.

The problem was coming from inside the hat.

And that, more than anything, scared them.