Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele Singer Reiner, were found dead in their apartment on December 14 this year. Their 32-year-old son, Nick Reiner, has been arrested and charged with the double murder of his parents. But what sparked widespread backlash was Donald Trump’s abrupt statement about their death, as he blamed it on Reiner’s “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”

According to OK! Trump’s controversial statement has resurfaced his long-buried personal link to Reiner. As the criticism around the statement is growing, an old podcast from 2017 has been revisited by people. In the interview, Reiner had revealed that his wife, who was a professional photographer, had photographed Trump, and that picture had appeared on the cover of his book The Art of the Deal.

This left many of his friends and professional peers surprised because they knew Reiner as one of Trump’s most outspoken critics in Hollywood. A source from the industry claimed that people were genuinely shocked to learn about the creative overlap between the two personalities.

But now, after Trump has made such a demeaning statement about Reiner, his death made the connection feel especially jarring, claimed the source.

Another source has added, “It complicates the story in a way no one expected and makes Trump’s comments seem even more cruel.”

It was on Politico’s Off Message podcast in 2017 that a journalist asked Rob Edward-Isaac Dovere about Trump’s skills as a performer, and he revealed the story of his wife shooting him. Answering the question about the U.S. President’s skills, the late Hollywood actor replied, “I mean, he has a persona, and he has a charisma.”

Sharing an anecdote from the photoshoot of Trump shot by his wife, Reiner revealed that while the picture was being clicked, the wind was blowing and the President said, “‘I got to get this hairspray,’ you know, ‘I need this special hairspray.'”

Rob added Donald “was always larger than life” and “always attractive in that, you know, charismatic celebrity way,” while stressing the MAGA leader was “not for every audience.”

Later in 2018, Reiner had cracked a joke about the book photo and said, “She has a lot to atone for.”

But all this cannot overshadow the fact that Reiner continued to condemn Trump’s presidency and even went on to call him “mentally unfit” and also called him an authoritarian. In a 2017 interview, the Hollywood star blasted Donald and called him the “single most unqualified human being ever to assume the presidency of the United States.”

And now, after Reiner’s demise, Trump’s tweet left everyone jaw-dropped. In his tweet, he wrote, “An unfortunate 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.”

The tweet further read, “He was known to have driven people CRAZY by his raging obsession with 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!”