It was a miserable start to one of the more miserable Monday mornings in recent memory, but President Donald Trump was in no hurry to soothe tensions. As the nation was still processing the brutal tragedy at Brown University, where two students were killed and at least nine others were injured on Saturday, Trump had his mind elsewhere. The Hollywood film director Rob Reiner, one of Trump’s betes noirs, had just been murdered with his wife Michele the day before. Trump was not in a conciliatory mood.
The president fired up his Truth Social account: “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.”
But instead of laughter and support, Trump’s post was met with condemnation from a wide cross-section of pundits and politicians regardless of political affiliation. For the first time in a long time, both Democrats and Republicans alike appeared to be equally horrified by Trump’s nasty comments. In a country overwhelmed by division, one quiet consensus still remains: Dancing on another human’s grave, rival or not, is a moral line best left uncrossed.
In life, Reiner was one of the most bellicose critics of Trump. In 2017, the then-71-year-old film director called Trump “mentally unfit” and suggested Trump was the “single most unqualified human being to ever assume the presidency of the United States.” The Emmy Award-winning director was a darling of the progressive left and made himself an enemy of Trump’s when he established a nonprofit to investigate Russia’s President Vladimir Putin’s alleged role in the 2016 election. A harsh critic of Trump’s relationship with Putin, Reiner warned that Trump’s ascendancy to the Oval Office signaled creeping fascism that mirrored that of the Russian state.
But criticism is part of the deal when you become president. It’s something Trump has always struggled with. The president surrounds himself with outspoken loyalists and, especially in the second administration, the sort of swamp creatures he once promised to slay. At this point, it’s clear the best way to enter and stay in Trump’s inner circle is by telling him what he wants to hear when he wants to hear it—and not a word more.
As a result, there evidently was no one in the president’s camp on Monday morning willing to suggest that maybe it would be best to let sleeping dogs lie as the nation mourned another horrific headline after another horrific weekend. Instead, we saw the worst of Trump: mean, old, uncharismatic Trump. Speaking of the slain director at an afternoon press conference on Monday, Trump doubled down on his morning dispatch.
“He was a deranged person, as far as Trump was concerned,” the president said, referring to himself in third person. “I was not a fan of Rob Reiner at all in any shape or form. I thought he was very bad for our country.”
Spotted in the halls of Congress later in the day, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) did his best to wiggle out of answering honestly about Trump’s comments. “I don’t do ongoing commentary about everything that’s said by everybody in government every day,” Johnson said, pivoting toward his attempts to “bring down health care costs for the American people.”
But those whose job is not to pivot away from such sordid fare were animated in their response to Trump’s dig at Reiner. “Rob Reiner and his wife were tragically killed at the hands of their own son, who reportedly had drug addiction and other issues, and their remaining children are left in serious mourning and heartbreak,” Trump-ally-turned-critic Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) wrote in response to Trump’s post. “This is a family tragedy, not about politics or political enemies.” Trump’s former lawyer Jenna Ellis also criticized Trump’s lowbrow tweet. “A man and his wife were murdered last night. This is NOT the appropriate response.”
Though Trump is correct in asserting that Reiner did spend many of his final years as an unofficial spokesman for the anti-Trump left, it’s undeniable that Reiner also found it within himself to speak out against political violence and seek consensus when Turning Point USA’s founder Charlie Kirk was gunned down on the campus of Utah Valley University in September. “It’s beyond belief what happened to him,” Reiner said in the days following Kirk’s assassination. “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.”
To steal the words right from Reiner’s mouth, the way Trump reacted to the director’s death on Monday morning was “not acceptable.” Despite the bitterness and animosity that have marked the Trump era on all sides, the fragile bonds holding our American society together are at their greatest strength when we insist on a basic standard of decency and respect for one another.
Reiner’s comments about Kirk were a small measure of grace that some in our America were unable to similarly afford the slain conservative. I saw it with my own eyes when a roadside poster of Kirk in Culpeper, Virginia was vandalized to blot out his face this fall, a reminder that even in a relatively rural and conservative part of the country, there is a palpable anger haunting our nation.
Trump could have played an integral role in tamping down such agitations but his post about Reiner on Monday morning says all you need to know about the sitting president. He’s vindictive, corrosive, petty, and more than anything, a disappointment. Instead of working tirelessly to fulfill his campaign promises to kickstart the American economy and keep us out of foreign wars, he’s done the opposite. Unemployment is at a four-year high, Trump insists affordability is a “hoax,” and we’re teetering on the edge of a shooting war with Venezuela. Gas prices are falling—but only because demand is falling. Trump, meanwhile, is busy building his ballroom, gilding the White House, and poking fun at the brutal murder of another human being.
“It’s nightmarish, what is happening in America,” Reiner said of Trump and America only weeks before his death. “I’m hoping we’ll survive this. And if we do, it’s going to take a long time to rebuild the shining city on the hill, the beacon to the rest of the world.”
He was right about that, at least. What is happening in our America right now is nightmarish. Trump’s statement about Reiner is a stain on his office. It will be rightfully used to highlight the true nature of a man who proudly spoke peace but often preferred war.
To the surviving Reiners, and especially the daughter who found her parents slaughtered on the first night of Hannukah: Please understand that the president’s remarks on Monday morning do not reflect the views or values of millions of Americans who voted for him. Let our condemnation of his words stand as evidence that there still is a united America somewhere out there, and it’s full of people who still believe in the sanctity of human life.
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