Editorial: Read Trump's Reiner post, then ask yourself if this man should have launch codes

St. Louis Post-Dispatch Editorial Board, St. Louis Post-Dispatch on Dec 19, 2025

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It’s time to ask the question plainly: Has President Donald Trump finally, fully lost it?

The latest indication that Trump is no longer just instinctively belligerent and cruel, but perhaps is experiencing something even more psychologically alarming, came Monday, in the form of (what else?) a social media post.

“Rob Reiner, a tortured and struggling, but once very talented movie director and comedy star, has passed away, together with his wife, Michele,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform, commenting on the weekend murders of the prominent Hollywood couple.

Then, off the cliff. Trump’s post claimed, baselessly and ridiculously, that the actor-director’s death was “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.”

There was some derangement going on here, all right.

Trump 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, and with the Golden Age of America upon us, perhaps like never before. May Rob and Michele rest in peace!”

Please pause here and read that again, keeping in mind that this person mocking murder victims, conjuring up a self-focused and utterly fantastical motive for their murders and grandly referring to himself in the third person has the power to unilaterally launch a nuclear first-strike at any time, at any target.

In this age of AI, the first instinct of any rational reader would be to wonder if the post was even real. Trump erased any doubt by doubling down on his contempt for the dead in subsequent comments to reporters. Reiner “was a deranged person as far as Trump is concerned,” said … Trump.

Reiner, 78, and Michele Singer Reiner, 70, were found stabbed to death in their California home Sunday. Their son, Nick Reiner, 32, has been arrested on suspicion of murder.

Reiner was famous as Archie Bunker’s “meathead” son-in-law in the landmark 1970s sitcom “All in the Family,” and later as an acclaimed director (“When Harry Met Sally,” “The Princess Bride,” “This is Spinal Tap”). He was an outspoken backer of liberal causes and a Trump critic.

The world by now is used to Trump’s bottomless malice toward anyone who has ever said anything less than laudatory about him. That he’s a clinical narcissist has been virtually beyond debate throughout his decade as a leading political figure. And we all know of his grotesque penchant for mocking the dead or wounded — from John McCain to Paul Pelosi to martyred American soldiers (“suckers and losers”).

This one feels a little different, though. Like his other unhinged outbursts lately — admonishing a female reporter with “Quiet, piggy!” for example — it was a shocking display of childishness and classlessness (even for him) with no apparent political upside.

In fact, Trump’s Reiner comments were so obscene that even a few Republican members of Congress roused themselves from their sycophantic slumber to chide him for it.

This wasn’t some ingenious four-dimensional-chess move. This was clearly a cognitive break from reality combined with a lack of impulse control.

Again — ponder those nukes.

This page highlighted former President Joe Biden’s cognitive decline and repeatedly pressed for him to forgo a reelection campaign for well over a year before that disastrous 2024 debate performance forced the issue. That, too, was a dangerous situation, but at least in Biden’s case, it’s clear that others were running the government as he declined.

There’s no indication of such grownups in the room around Trump. If anything, his collection of misfit minions — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Attorney General Pam Bondi, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and the rest — have shown an infinite eagerness to follow him down whatever unconstitutional rabbit hole he’s inclined to go.

What to do with all this?

At a minimum, the nation should resume the debate, started during Trump’s first term, over whether any president should have unilateral authority to launch a nuclear first-strike without input from anyone else, as is currently the case. We should also be talking about whether an upper age limit and/or cognitive function exams should be added to the constitutional requirements for being president.

Meanwhile, Americans should resist the familiar urge toward numbness at Trump’s constant barrage of out-there rhetoric. Driven by cognitive decline or not, his continuing assaults on civilizational norms must never become normal.

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