Did Rob Reiner say he wished the would-be Donald Trump assassin "hadn't missed"? No, that's not true: A source close to the family told Lead Stories the claim is "nonsense." Lead Stories found no evidence that Reiner ever said he wished the gunman had killed Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, in 2024. Social media posts claiming that "liberals are all butt hurt over what Trump said about Reiner" justified Trump's critical message about Reiner's death by falsely asserting that Reiner had made callous remarks after Trump was wounded.
The claim appeared in a December 16, 2025 post on Facebook account @TreyGowdySupporters (archived here). It opened:
You Liberals are all butt hurt over what Trump said about Reiner but you never said a word when Reiner said he wished that the Assassin hadn't missed, when Trump was shot in Pennsylvania so STFU!
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Image Source: Lead Stories screenshot from facebook.com/TreyGowdySupporters.)
A source close to the family told Lead Stories on Dec. 17, 2025, that the claim was "nonsense."
The Facebook post provides no evidence that Reiner ever said he wished the assassin had not missed when Trump was shot in Pennsylvania. Had Reiner made such a statement, it likely would have drawn widespread attention, given that he is a well-known Hollywood figure involved in Democratic politics and fundraising.
A key word search on Google News (archived here) and Yahoo! News (archived here) did not find any relevant results that Reiner said he wished the assassin had not missed when he shot Trump in 2024.
The Facebook post refers to condemnations of a Truth Social post by Trump in which he insulted Reiner following Reiner's Dec. 14, 2025, murder. This is the message Trump posted (archived here):
(Image Source: Lead Stories screenshot from TruthSocial/DonaldTrump.)
Reiner had condemned political violence as recently as Sept. 2025, after the murder of Charlie Kirk.
During an appearance on "Piers Morgan Uncensored", Reiner called the killing of Kirk "an absolute horror", saying, "That should never happen to anybody. I don't care what your political beliefs are -- that's not acceptable, and that's not a solution to solving your problems." In the aftermath of the Reiner murders, Morgan shared a clip from his show on his X.com account.
"That should never happen to anybody - I don't care what your political beliefs are."
-- Piers Morgan Uncensored (@PiersUncensored) December 15, 2025
Rob Reiner's response to the murder of Charlie Kirk on Uncensored three months ago.
Rest in Peace, Rob.@piersmorgan pic.twitter.com/WKySmmlnuM
