Stephen A. Smith has issued a stark warning to the Republican Party, arguing that Donald Trump‘s recent attacks on the late Rob Reiner will hurt the GOP politically.
The controversy ignited earlier this week following the shocking deaths of the Hollywood director and his wife, Michele, who were found murdered in their Los Angeles home.
In the immediate aftermath, Trump took to Truth Social and spoke to reporters in the Oval Office, blaming Reiner’s death on ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome’ and describing the director as a ‘deranged person’ who was ‘very bad for our country.’
Smith, reacting to the President’s comments on his show Straight Shooter with Stephen A. Smith, argued that this lack of empathy is a political liability.
‘It’s stuff like this that’s going to end up costing the GOP,’ Smith said. ‘And I want to state [that] it’s not because of them. Plenty of them have come up and spoke out against the president. But it’s disgusting rhetoric like this – there’s no place for it.’
‘When Charlie Kirk got assassinated, people like myself and various others were like: ‘Yo! He got killed. Don’t come to us with the rhetoric that you believe he was spewing online or when he was going to college campuses’.
Stephen A. Smith has issued a stark warning to the Republican Party, arguing that Donald Trump’s recent attacks on the late Rob Reiner will hurt the GOP politically
Donald Trump pushed back on those criticizing his statement on the late director Rob Reiner on Monday, saying in the Oval Office: ‘I was not a fan’
Rob Reiner, 78, and his wife Michele were allegedly found in their beds with their throats slit by police after their daughter Romy called 911, sources exclusively told the Daily Mail
‘All of that is up for debate in terms of what he said, how offensive it was and all that other stuff. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about prioritizing a core level of decency.’
‘When somebody gets killed, that ain’t the time to be sticking out your chest and basically indicating that they brought it on themselves – when there should never be any place for violence,’ Smith said.
‘And you think that our commander-in-chief, the president of the United States of America, would know this better than anybody. But, evidently, this man does not.’
Beyond the moral failing, Smith voiced frustration that Trump’s inflammatory behavior makes it impossible to have necessary discussions about his actual policy record.
‘This is the kind of stuff that pisses me off. Because, guess what, I want a healthy debate about Trump, in terms of, are the tariffs working? Did he do the right thing with the border? How’s the economy? What about the Affordable Care Act? That’s what I would like to be debating and discussing,’ Smith explained.
‘So, when a president talks about how great he is and all these things that he’s done, I’d like to focus on that. And when he’s right, I’d like to give him credit for that and when he’s wrong I’d like to say he’s wrong.’
Smith concluded that no matter the policy achievements, the President’s conduct remains a stumbling block.
‘But it’s stuff like this, where all of that gets shoved aside because of the classlessnes, the juvenile tendencies, the lack of statesmanship that he exercises and puts on display time and time again.’
‘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,’ Trump posted about Reiner
The 78-year-old director famously supported liberal causes and Democratic candidates (pictured with Hillary Clinton in 2008)
Smith’s comments come in response to a series of attacks launched by Trump against Reiner just hours after the director and his wife were found dead.
‘Well, I wasn’t a fan of his at all. He was a deranged person. As far as Trump was concerned,’ Trump told a reporter in the Oval Office on Monday.
‘I think he hurt himself, career-wise, he became like a deranged person, [with] Trump derangement syndrome. So I was not a fan of Rob Reiner at all, in any way shape or form. I thought he was very bad for our country.’
Prior to that, Trump had wrote that Reiner, a ‘once very talented movie director and comedy star,’ passed away, ‘reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease’ known as TDS – or Trump Derangement Syndrome. The term is used by conservatives to describe disdain for the Republican President.
Trump’s post continued: ‘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.’
The vicious statement about the couple’s death highlighted Trump’s tendency to attack public figures following their passing. The Republican has also ridiculed the late Senator John McCain and General Colin Powell after they died.
Reiner famously supported liberal causes and Democratic candidates, even downplaying concerns over Joe Biden‘s age. ‘Look, he’s old!’ the 78-year-old director explained in a February 2024 interview before Biden dropped out.
Reiner also loudly opposed Trump, calling him ‘mentally unfit’ and repeatedly claiming the Republican is an autocrat in interviews over the years.
Reiner and his son Nick attend the premiere of Being Charlie in New York in 2016. Nick worked on the film from rehab and collaborated with his director father on the project
‘Donald Trump is the single most unqualified human being to ever assume the presidency of the United States,’ Reiner told Variety in a 2017 interview.
The couple’s son Nick, 32, is in custody and has been booked for murder after Reiner and Michele were found knifed to death.
They allegedly had their throats slit after a heated argument with a relative, understood to be Nick, turned deadly at their $13.5 million Los Angeles mansion on Sunday afternoon.
Reiner made many of the best-known movies of the 1980s and 1990s, including Stand By Me and The Princess Bride, legal thriller A Few Good Men, and romantic comedy When Harry Met Sally.