CNN panelists Van Jones and Pete Seat said on Tuesday that President Donald Trump is paying a “political price” on his own side of the aisle over his response to Hollywood director Rob Reiner’s death.
Trump blamed the deaths of Reiner and his wife, Michele, on driving people crazy with their Trump Derangement Syndrome in a Truth Social post on Monday and later doubled down on his statement. Jones and Seat, a former spokesperson for former President George W. Bush, said on “CNN News Central” that Trump’s response hurt him politically and showed a failure in character.
“And it was very interesting, the Republicans spent a lot of time beating up those Democrats, a minority, who were criticizing Charlie Kirk, basically kicking the corpse of Charlie Kirk and saying horrible things about him while they were still mopping up the blood,” Jones said. “That is out of bounds. And to see the leader of that same party, the Republican Party, a few months later, doing the same thing and then doubling down, I think he has failed character test after character test. But this one, in an age of rising violence, of political violence, is an F minus minus.”