Utah Gov. Spencer Cox and two of his predecessors warned against the corrosion of political debate — including former Gov. Gary Herbert, who leveled specific criticism Monday at a social media post by Donald Trump that blamed the alleged slaying of noted director Rob Reiner on “deranged” hatred of the president.
Reiner and his wife, Michelle, were found dead in their Los Angeles-area home Sunday night with stab wounds. The couple’s son Nick later was arrested on suspicion of murder.
Trump wrote on Truth Social on Monday that their deaths were “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.”
Asked by reporters if he stood by the post, Trump said that Reiner — a vocal Trump critic and the director of classic movies such as “This Is Spinal Tap,” “When Harry Met Sally” and “The Princess Bride” — was “deranged” and “very bad for our country.”
Herbert said he got along well with Trump but asked, “Is there not any ability for compassion and grace and respect under a difficult circumstance?”
“We’re on a pathway of division and divisiveness that we ought not to be on,” Herbert said, crediting Cox for trying to cool down the heated political rhetoric. “We, as Republicans, [need] to say, ‘Let’s hold our candidates to a higher standard. Same with Democrats. … Let’s have some grace and compassion and mutual respect. … We’re all God’s children.”
(Chris Samuels | The Salt Lake Tribune) Former Gov. Gary Herbert criticized President Donald Trump's social media post about the death of director Rob Reiner.
Herbert’s words, delivered as part of a panel discussion at the University of Utah with Cox and former Gov. Mike Leavitt before an audience of Republican donors and officeholders, drew applause from the crowd.
Herbert also decried Trump for referring to Nikki Haley, who served as governor of South Carolina when Herbert was in office, as “birdbrain” when she ran for president. “She’s a smart lady. Why do we tolerate that?”
Leavitt, who was Utah’s governor from 1993 to 2003 before leaving to serve in President George W. Bush’s administration, said “people can feel” the incivility in political discourse.
(Bethany Baker | The Salt Lake Tribune) Former Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt says the current political polarization is not healthy.
“There’s a divisiveness, a polarization, that is intuitively not healthy,” Leavitt told reporters afterward, “and it’s important that, as a country, we find our way into the sense of harmony that’s allowed us to become and remain a strong global power that is exceptional. And part of what has made us exceptional is our capacity to operate and move forward together.”
(Bethany Baker | The Salt Lake Tribune) Gov. Spencer Cox speaks during a panel during the 2025 AI Summit at Salt Palace Convention Center in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2025.
Cox, who has made the slogan “Disagree Better” central to his administration and worked with Democratic governors from other states to promote the theme, said the country “desperately needs … more of Utah right now.”
“People are tired of the divisiveness. They’re desperate for something different, in both parties,” he said. “There’s a market failure in our politics today. No one is offering anything different, and I just hope that we’ll continue to be who we are as Utahns.”