8 hours ago

Trump bashes late director Rob Reiner, drawing immediate backlash

Less than a day after acclaimed film director Rob Reiner was found dead in his Los Angeles home, President Donald Trump posited that the Hollywood icon was killed because he was critical of Trump.

Reiner and his wife, photographer Michele Singer Reiner, were found dead in their home Sunday, according to police, who said they are investigating the deaths as homicides. Authorities have released little other information, including about a possible motive. Nick Reiner, the 32-year-old son of the director and photographer, was arrested late Sunday on a murder charge.

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Trump, however, asserted in a social media post Monday that Reiner’s death was somehow connected to the president.

“A very sad thing happened last night in Hollywood. Rob Reiner, a tortured and struggling, but once very talented movie director and comedy star, has passed away, together with his wife, Michele, reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME, sometimes referred to as TDS,” Trump wrote on his social media platform.

Trump went on to add: “He was known to have driven people CRAZY by his raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump, with his obvious paranoia reaching new heights as the Trump Administration surpassed all goals and expectations of greatness, and with the Golden Age of America upon us, perhaps like never before. May Rob and Michele rest in peace!”

White House representatives did not respond to a request for comment Monday, but the White House’s rapid response account on X reposted Trump’s Truth Social post. Asked by reporters about his post during a White House event Monday afternoon, Trump said of Reiner, “He was a deranged person” and accused the late director of being one of the people behind what he calls “the Russia hoax” - a reference to investigations into whether Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help Trump win.

Trump’s post drew immediate backlash from across the ideological spectrum, including from several prominent right-wing figures. Some - including Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) and Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky) - have had high-profile fallouts with Trump in recent months. Greene said the situation was “not about politics or political enemies” and called for empathy, while Massie challenged anyone to defend Trump’s post.

“Regardless of how you felt about Rob Reiner, this is inappropriate and disrespectful discourse about a man who was just brutally murdered. I guess my elected GOP colleagues, the VP, and White House staff will just ignore it because they’re afraid?” Massie wrote on social media.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) declined to comment on Trump’s post. “It’s a tragedy, and my sympathies and prayers go out the Reiner family,” Thune told reporters.

Other conservatives who said they found Trump’s post distasteful have typically agreed with him. Podcaster Alex Stone said on X that the president should delete his post.

“I don’t care what their politics were or how they felt about Trump, no law abiding human deserves this. We should pray for + send condolences to his loved ones and NOT make it political,” conservative activist Robby Starbuck wrote on X on Monday.

Reiner - who directed such classics as “This is Spinal Tap,” “Stand by Me,” “When Harry Met Sally...” and “A Few Good Men” - was a longtime supporter of Democratic causes and candidates. He opposed the Iraq War, helped lead the fight for marriage equality in California and advocated for early-childhood education, among other issues.

Reiner was also a vocal critic of Trump, starting with his first term - though they had crossed paths decades before, when Michele Singer Reiner, a professional photographer, shot the cover photo for Trump’s 1987 book, “The Art of the Deal.” At the time, Rob Reiner said he observed Trump’s “larger than life” charisma, according to a 2017 Politico interview in which he recounted the story.

In a 2017 interview with Vanity Fair, Reiner called Trump “mentally unfit” to be president. Reiner and his wife produced “God & Country,” a documentary released last year that explored the rise of Christian nationalism in America.

In October, Reiner told MS NOW that he feared the United States was becoming an autocracy, describing the Trump administration’s pressures on the media and entertainment industries as “beyond McCarthy era-esque.”

“Make no mistake: We have a year before this country becomes a full-on autocracy and democracy completely leaves us,” Reiner said then.

Trump’s social media post about Reiner comes after his allies called for consequences for those who posted anything they deemed offensive or insensitive about the September slaying of Charlie Kirk, a Trump ally and founder of the conservative youth organization Turning Point USA.

In what would be one of Reiner’s last interviews, the director told Piers Morgan in September that he felt “absolute horror” at Kirk’s killing.

“That should never happen to anybody. I don’t care what your political beliefs are. That’s not acceptable. That’s not a solution to solving problems,” he said then.

Some conservative figures who pushed back on Trump’s post cited Kirk’s death - and the calls afterward for more civility - as a reason the president’s post was inappropriate.

“The Right uniformly condemned political and celebratory responses to Charlie Kirk’s death,” Jenna Ellis, formerly an attorney for Trump, wrote on X. “This is a horrible example from Trump (and surprising considering the two attempts on his own life) and should be condemned by everyone with any decency.”

“Trump really said ‘how can I make the horrific murder of a father and mother about me?’” Turning Point contributor Savanah Hernandez wrote on X.

Gabe Guidarini, who works for the affiliated advocacy group Turning Point Action in Ohio, cast Trump’s comments as a strategic hindrance in a post on X.

“The right (rightfully) campaigned to fire people who mocked Charlie Kirk’s murder and now we’ve lost our public legitimacy to do that in the future because people can just say ‘look the president said this,’” he wrote. A representative for Turning Point USA did not respond to a request for comment.

Raheem Kassam, editor of the National Pulse, and Breanna Morello, who often appears on Alex Jones’s outlet Infowars, disapproved of Trump’s comments. “Don’t love this, to be honest,” Kassam wrote. “Rob Reiner was compassionate when Charlie Kirk was assassinated,” Morello said. “Do the same.”

Still, others doubled down on defending Trump, including Trump adviser Alex Bruesewitz and far-right activists Jack Posobiec and Laura Loomer.

“I’m not going to participate in the fake outrage at President Trump for his response to Rob Reiner,” Bruesewitz wrote. “Rob Reiner called for Trump to be arrested and charged with treason, a crime punishable by death. He was quite nasty toward the President. Regardless, RIP!”

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Scott Nover and Mariana Alfaro contributed to this report.