President Donald Trump has attracted a huge backlash over his attack on Hollywood movie director Rob Reiner, who was found dead at his Los Angeles home on Sunday alongside his wife Michele Singer Reiner.
The couple’s son Nick Reiner has been taken into custody on suspicion of their murders. Despite this, the president took to Truth Social to declare Reiner was killed “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.”
Late-night TV host Jimmy Kimmel, a regular critic of Trump, called his remarks “hateful and vile” and the president a “sick and irresponsible man,” just one of many commentators to issue an emotional rebuke.
Rather than apologize, Trump doubled-down, insisting later at the White House that Reiner had been “a deranged person” who had wrongly accused him of being “controlled by Russia” and been “very bad for our country,” leading many to wonder why the president was quite so hostile to his memory.
The director and actor was a lifelong Democrat and activist who was never afraid to share his political views. Tributes have flooded in from famous party figures, including former presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, ex-vice president Kamala Harris, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and former House speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Reiner attacked Trump personally on a number of occasions, notably during an appearance at the Dubai International Film Festival in December 2017 when he told Variety that the president, then in his first term, was “mentally unfit” for the Oval Office and accused the American press of failing to hold him to account.
“Donald Trump is the single most unqualified human being to ever assume the presidency of the United States,” Reiner said. “He is mentally unfit. Not only does he not understand how government works, he has no interest in trying to find out how it works.”
In an interview with The Independent in February 2018, he said: “Right now we’ve got this battle of the soul of whether democracy survives – what is true and what is not true. It’s very scary here in this country.
More recently, he told MS NOW in 2023, in a look-ahead to the following year’s presidential election: “You have one candidate, Trump, who actually tells you he’s going to govern like an authoritarian. Do we want fascism or do we want to continue the 248 years of self-rule? Do we want to continue democracy or do we want to slip into fascism?”
He attacked Trump on the same network in October over what he considered to be his clampdown on free speech, saying: “It’s beyond McCarthy era-esque. That feels quaint compared to what’s going on in America right now. The Hollywood community is very much aware of their First Amendment rights being infringed. So, we’re well aware of what’s happening.
“But our job now, as communicators, is to start communicating to the rest of the country, to let them know what is going to happen to them.”
Commentators have also pointed out that Reiner’s response to the assassination of Turning Point USA co-founder Charlie Kirk earlier this year were markedly different to Trump’s reaction to the director’s killing.
Appearing on Piers Morgan’s Uncensored show, Reiner said following Kirk’s shooting: “I unfortunately saw the video of it. It’s beyond belief what happened to him.”
The attack “should never happen to anybody,” he added. “I don’t care what your political beliefs are. That’s not acceptable. That’s not a solution to solving problems.”
He also warmly praised Erika Kirk, the deceased’s widow, for saying at a memorial service for her husband that she forgave his killer.
“I’m Jewish but I believe in the teachings of Jesus and I believe in ‘do unto others’ and I believe in forgiveness and what she said to me was beautiful. She forgave his assassin,” Reiner said. “And I think that is admirable.”
