Updated Dec. 15, 2025, 5:19 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON ‒ President Donald Trump doubled down on his widely criticized attack of the late film director Rob Reiner, expressing no regret nor offering an apology for comments that even some Republican supporters have since denounced.
“I thought he was very bad for our country,” Trump said on Dec. 15 when asked whether he stands by his social media post about Reiner from earlier in the day.
Earlier in the day, Trump responded to Reiner’s death in a Truth Social post that said Reiner and his wife, Michele Singer, died “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, when asked later about Republican criticism over his post, told reporters: “I wasn’t a fan of his at all. He was a deranged person as far as Trump is concerned.”
The president accused Reiner, who died at 78, of falsely claiming Trump was controlled by Russia.
“I was not a fan of Rob Reiner at all ‒ in any way, shape or form,” he said.
Police have arrested Reiner’s son, 32-year-old Nick Reiner, on murder charges and are holding him on no bail after his initial bail was set at $4 million. There has been no indication from officials that Reiner’s death had anything to do with his political beliefs.
Trump’s social media post drew widespread bipartisan criticism, including from some Republican supporters of the president.
“A father and mother were murdered at the hands of their troubled son,” Rep. Stephanie Bice, R-Oklahoma, wrote in a social media response. “We should be lifting the family up in prayer, not making this about politics.”
Rep. Mike Lawler, R-New York, called Trump’s remarks about Reiner “wrong” in a statement. “It’s a horrible tragedy that should engender sympathy and compassion from everyone in our country, period,” Lawler said.
Christian conservative theologian Russell Moore, a Trump critic and former senior official at the Southern Baptist Commission, was more scathing.
“How this vile, disgusting, and immoral behavior has become normalized in the United States is something our descendants will study in school, to the shame of our generation,” Moore, an editor at large for Christianity Today magazine, wrote on social media.
Contributing: Zac Anderson of USA TODAY
Joey Garrison can be reached on X at @joeygarrison.
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