It didn't take long for US President Donald Trump, the world's most insatiable publicity vampire, to make the deaths of film director Rob Reiner and his wife all about him.
Reiner and Michele Singer Reiner were stabbed to death in their Los Angeles home on Sunday. One of their sons, Nick Reiner, has been booked into jail on suspicion of carrying out the attack.
Instead of sharing a simple note of condolence, Mr Trump posted a message on Truth Social on Monday in which he (or an account-handling minion) suggested Reiner had been killed because he didn't like the President.
“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 wrote.
“He was known to have driven people crazy by his raging obsession [with me]".
Mr Trump held a particular dislike for Reiner because of the filmmaker's political views. The long-standing Trump critic had often spoken out against the President, warning that his strongman tactics threaten the very fabric of US political life.
“Make no mistake. We have a year before this country becomes a full-on autocracy and democracy completely leaves us,” Mr Reiner said on MSNBC in September.
Despite being the most powerful man on the planet, Mr Trump is known to have thin skin and to bear grudges against critics, as shown by his use of the Department of Justice to pursue political opponents.
“I wasn’t a fan of his at all. [Reiner] was a deranged person, as far as Trump is concerned,” Mr Trump told reporters, referring to himself in the third person.
Predictably – and perhaps by design – the comments brought a torrent of condemnation, ensuring Mr Trump stayed in the headlines and drawing attention away from the many tributes for Reiner, the renowned director whose work included Stand by Me, The Princess Bride and This is Spinal Tap, and helped to define the 1980s and '90s.
“This is a dreadful thing to say about a man who just got murdered … delete it, Mr President,” UK broadcaster Piers Morgan wrote on X.
Tellingly, the outrage even seeped into the Republican Party, with several conservatives daring to speak out against their leader.
“Regardless of how you felt about Rob Reiner, this is inappropriate and disrespectful discourse about a man who was just brutally murdered,” Republican Representative Thomas Massie, who has previously criticised Mr Trump, wrote on X.
Republican members of Congress Mike Lawler and Stephanie Bice, who are not known for critiquing the White House, also criticised Mr Trump’s message, as did Marjorie Taylor Greene, who said: “This is a family tragedy, not about politics or political enemies.”
Any collective concept of US presidential norms imploded long ago, but Mr Trump's message should be concerning for us all. Criticising a man who has just been killed as “deranged” and trying to make the story about himself is not “normal”. The President risks presenting an increasingly embittered image, with the only deranged person appearing to be himself.
The fact that some conservatives had the nerve to speak out is a worrying sign for Mr Trump, 79. The lame duck leader is increasingly being seen as a liability over his handling of the economy and other issues before next year's midterm elections, and Republicans are beginning to imagine a post-Trump world.
Still, most Republicans chose to ignore the post or pretend they hadn't seen it, bringing to mind a sentiment from A Few Good Men, one of Reiner's most famous movies: “You can't handle the truth.”
