Last December, it was revealed that filmmaker Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele Singer Reiner, had been found dead in their Los Angeles home. Their son, Nick, murdered them, and tributes for The Princess Bride helmer and his spouse quickly poured in.
President Donald Trump, however, took a slightly different approach. While acknowledging that Reiner’s passing was “very sad,” he also pointed out that, “He was known to have driven people CRAZY by his raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump.” He also insinuated that the director and actor’s “Trump Derangement Syndrome” was a contributing factor in his murder.
WWE has a relatively close relationship with the Commander-in-Chief, with Triple H and Stephanie McMahon having made several appearances alongside Trump in the Oval Office in recent years. Linda McMahon, meanwhile, is a member of the President’s cabinet as Secretary of Education.
For WWE Hall of Famer Mick Foley, Trump’s comments were the straw that broke the camel’s back…and ended his relationship with WWE. He’s since made his AEW debut and now told Ariel Helwani why he made the tough decision to sever ties with the company he found superstardom in.
“Everyone has to make the decision that feels right to them. I sometimes describe someone’s big break as being more like a series of little breaks, like a ball peen hammer and a windshield,” Foley explained. “You don’t know which tap actually causes the crack. For me, it was the comments about Rob Reiner.”
“Just heartless and unbelievably cruel comments coming from the most powerful man in the world, finding joy in how somebody died, belittling the man who just died, somehow tying it into Reiner’s dislike of Donald Trump. For me, that was the ball peen hammer tap that broke the windshield.”
“I think when five different people are posing in the Oval Office, and they’ve all received Stone Cold stunners, that’s a little cosy,” he said of WWE’s ties to Trump. “Even though I wasn’t technically employed by the company, because I had a Legends deal and because my name’s been associated with WWE for over 30 years, I felt like I was complicit in my silence.”
Adding that he reached out to the company’s Head of Talent Relations, Foley revealed that someone much higher up in the company called him to argue that the connection between WWE and Trump wasn’t as strong as he believed. The WWE Hall of Famer, however, pushed back on that.
“I said, ‘Come on, five people in that Oval Office took the stunner.’ And theoretically that’s the case, but I could have sworn I saw Paul behind the president’s shoulder when he was at a policy announcement. Her last name is McMahon, and she’s associated with the company.”
He added, “I realised that by giving up two really easy, very high-paying jobs at WrestleMania week for WWE, I had to work 24 hours on my own to make what I could have been paid in six. And I’m okay with that. I just didn’t want to be in a position where my grandchildren are asking what their grandfather was doing when things were really tough, and I want my children to be able to say this is what Grandpa did.”
“I love that company. I’m not going to disparage them. It just didn’t seem like a fit that would allow me to look at myself in the mirror before I went to bed,” Foley concluded, suggesting he would consider working with WWE again when Trump is no longer in the Oval Office.
You can check out the full interview in the player below.