US president Donald Trump has been criticised for mocking Rob Reiner in a social media post on Monday. Mr Trump suggested the slain actor and director died because of his anti-Trump views – a remark that triggered swift and bipartisan backlash for injecting politics into a family tragedy.
A vocal Democratic activist, Mr Reiner (78), and his wife Michele (70), were found dead in their home on Sunday. Their son Nick Reiner was arrested on homicide charges. Police have yet to ascribe a motive.
In a post on Truth Social, Mr Trump referred to Rob Reiner as “tortured and struggling” and said Mr Reiner and his wife had passed away “reportedly due to the anger he caused” by opposing the Republican president.
“He was known to have driven people CRAZY by his raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump,” the president said.
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The White House reposted Trump’s comments on its official “Rapid Response” account on X.
The president, who frequently lashes out at his opponents and praises public figures who support him, offered no evidence that Mr Reiner’s political views contributed in any way to the couple’s death.
Mr Trump’s comments on Monday drew criticism from across the political spectrum.
“Regardless of how you felt about Rob Reiner, this is inappropriate and disrespectful discourse about a man who was just brutally murdered,” wrote Republican US representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky.
“This is a family tragedy, not about politics or political enemies,” wrote Republican representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.
Both Mr Massie and Ms Taylor Greene are Trump critics, a rarity within the president’s party.
But House speaker Mike Johnson, a major Trump ally, also distanced himself from the president’s post. “We have to appeal to our better angels, and I think we’ve got to amplify those voices and those sentiments. So that’s my position on it,” he told reporters when asked about Mr Trump’s comments.
Asked in the Oval Office if he stood by the post after the Republican criticism, Mr Trump responded: “I wasn’t a fan of his at all, he was a deranged person as far as Trump is concerned.”
Mr Reiner told Variety in 2017 during Mr Trump’s first term that Mr Trump was “mentally unfit” and called him “the single most unqualified human being to ever assume the presidency of the United States”.
Mr Trump said in his post on Monday that Mr Reiner had the “mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME,” a term the president uses for many of his critics.
The Democratic Party called Mr Trump’s post “heartless.”
David Axelrod, a former adviser to US president Barack Obama, called it perverse. “The absence of empathy & grace for the Reiner family in their moment of profound loss and grief is sad and revealing,” he wrote on X.
Republicans and Trump supporters were sharply critical of anyone who highlighted right-leaning activist Charlie Kirk’s controversial views in the aftermath of his murder in September.
Television host Whoopi Goldberg, who described Mr Reiner as her friend and “quite an amazing man,” referenced Mr Trump’s own attacks on critics of the far-right political activist Charlie Kirk, who was shot dead in September.
That killing prompted reprisals from the White House against those who cited Kirk’s history of hostile rhetoric toward immigrants, women and other marginalised groups.
Goldberg said: “I don’t understand the man in the White House. He spoke at length about Charlie Kirk and about caring, and then this is what he puts out. Have you no shame? No shame at all? Can you get any lower? I don’t think so.” – Agencies.
