Truly Unhinged: Trump Suggests Rob Reiner Had It Coming For Criticizing Him
When Hollywood legend Rob Reiner and his wife Michele Singer Reiner were murdered Sunday evening—allegedly by their son, who was arrested—you might (had you been living in another time with a different President) have expected the President of the United States to either stay silent or offer condolences.
Instead, Donald Trump saw an opportunity to demonstrate to the world—yet again—how truly depraved and obsessed he is.
That’s Trump on Truth Social saying:
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. 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!
Read that again. The President of the United States is claiming—with zero evidence—that Reiner’s murder happened “due to the anger he caused others” through his criticism of Trump. He’s framing political speech against Trump as something that drives people “crazy” and justifies violence.
This is the same administration that spent months after Charlie Kirk’s death insisting that even quoting Kirk’s own hateful rhetoric was unacceptable and deserving of cancellation. Pam Bondi threatened to prosecute those who criticized Kirk, claiming it incited violence. There was a flood of think pieces demanding we “turn down the rhetoric” even as MAGA immediately ramped up “the war on the left” in Kirk’s name.
But when someone who spent decades speaking out against fascism—Rob Reiner, beloved for his work on All in the Family and for directing genre-defining films, a key player in legalizing same-sex marriage, someone whose empathy and kindness touched countless lives—is murdered? Trump claims Reiner basically had it coming because his anti-Trump activism drove people “crazy.”
Trump is mad because Reiner has been a loud, consistent, and vocal critic of the President, highlighting the many ways in which Donald Trump is unfit for office. And Trump’s obsession with that criticism is the only thing in this story that’s truly “crazy.”
The message from Trump is clear: criticizing Trump is what causes violence. Supporting Trump justifies it.
And much of the media is just letting it slide by, “reporting the facts” of what Trump said, rather than just how unhinged it is:
Thankfully, at least some in the media are calling out how ridiculous and unhinged this is, but the rush to try to normalize Trump’s rhetoric is dangerous. The underlying point remains the same: Trump just told everyone, from the Oval Office, that a murdered man basically had it coming for criticizing him too much.
Add to this Trump’s pardoning of all the January 6th criminals, the ramping up of violence by ICE and CBP in cities, and the non-stop hateful rhetoric, and Donald Trump is making it clear: violence in support of Donald Trump is noble.
And that’s fucking crazy.
The only consistency with Donald Trump is that if you support Trump, you can be as violent as you want.