The profound strangeness of the Trump era in American politics has driven people in public life to a lot of unusual behavior. Evangelical Christians are contorting themselves to accommodate the reality of Stormy Daniels, congressmen are chasing conspiracy theories and Kanye West is nattering about “dragon energy” on Twitter. But even by these standards, a Wednesday tweet from Philippe Reines, a longtime press aide to Hillary Clinton who now works as a political consultant, was truly off-kilter.
Reines decided that a Page Six story about Vanessa Trump’s high school relationship with a man named Valentin Rivera was prime fodder to use to taunt Donald Trump Jr., whom Vanessa Trump is divorcing. “Vanessa being with a Latin King must’ve driven you insanely jealous,” Reines wrote, linking to the article. “The machismo, the passion. Tough act to follow. Did you wonder if she fantasized about Valentin Rivera when intimate with you? She did. Every time.”
This is deranged behavior from an ostensible communications professional, even one with a caustic reputation. It also says a great deal more about Reines’s imagination than Vanessa Trump’s, unless, for some unlikely reason, she has been been dishing about her intimate life to Reines as if he were a Bizarro World Stanford Blatch.* Reines’s proximity to the Clintons — at least one of whom was quick to condemn him — and his general air of aggressiveness make him different from a lot of us. But this incident is still a useful warning about the dangers of stepping over the line between opposing someone’s politics or personal conduct and wishing torment upon them.
I speak as someone who is not exactly immune from this impulse.
Just last night, as the primary results from West Virginia rolled in, I found myself tempted to tweet that it was a good thing that Don Blankenship, the repulsive coal baron who was seeking a Senate seat in that state, was going to have an unhappy night, and possibly many thereafter. Blankenship seems like a truly awful person: Prior to the Senate race, he spent a year in jail after being convicted of conspiring to violate mine safety and health standards after an accident in which 29 miners who worked for him were killed. But his unhappiness won’t actually bring those people back from the dead, nor will it restore the economic and cultural losses that have resulted from the decline of the American coal industry. And sitting around imagining Blankenship’s misery doesn’t do much for me, either.
The Trump era and Trump orbit offer a lot of rich fodder for wistful schadenfreude. Analyzing Donald and Melania Trump’s body language has become a cottage industry for the gossip press, fueling speculation that the first lady will divorce her husband and become sort of marital agent of the “resistance,” destroying a man who has heretofore proved immune to … well, pretty much anything. Jared Kushner’s smugness, shady financial dealings and inability to correctly fill out disclosure forms have prompted longing hopes that he will follow his father to jail.
The insult “cuck,” a shortening of “cuckold” that lends itself to creative portmanteaus implying emasculation, may have its origins in the alt-right. But plenty of people on the left have embraced the basic sentiment, taking savage pleasure in the spectacle of Trump humiliating and firing various underlings. And, as Reines’s behavior suggests, sometimes the desire to see our political opponents cuckolded is apparently quite literal.
It’s one thing to hope that the system works — that the Don Blankenships of the world will not be elected to higher office, or that people who hope to enrich themselves through public service will find their efforts stymied. But as I suspect Reines is about to find out, the risk in taking your political enmity to vengeful, pornographic places is that you end up exposing yourself.
*Since the election, I’ve learned it’s wise to be skeptical without entirely ruling anything out.