After Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele Singer Reiner, were discovered dead in their Los Angeles home on Dec. 14, 2025, posts began circulating on social media that attributed a variety of quotes to the director. Some posts claimed that in July 2024, when asked about the assassination attempt against U.S. President Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, Reiner — an outspoken critic of Trump — said, “Too bad he turned his head. Maybe next time they won’t miss.”
Snopes readers wrote in asking us whether the quote was true. We found no evidence suggesting that Reiner had ever said those words.
First, it’s important to note that the purported quote is inflammatory. “Too bad he turned his head. Maybe next time they won’t miss,” is a direct way of wishing for Trump’s death. Given Reiner’s celebrity status, reputable entertainment publications likely would have reported on the quote at the time if Reiner truly said it. Snopes searched Google, Yahoo, Bing and DuckDuckGo for articles documenting the quote. There were none, a large indication the quote was made up.
The social media posts sharing the supposed quote generally used the same image. Because the quote supposedly originated in July 2024 when Reiner was asked about the assassination attempt, images sharing the quote, if legitimate, probably would have been circulating online for a while. However, using Google’s reverse image search suggested that posts about the supposed quote began appearing in December 2025.
Finally, Snopes also searched archives of Reiner’s now-deleted social media pages searching for the quote. We similarly came up empty.
Snopes also fact-checked a different unfounded quote Reiner supposedly made about the Trump assassination attempt, allegedly saying that he wished the shooter “hadn’t missed.”
Sources
Chowdhury, Tori B. Powell, Shania Shelton, Matt Meyer, Isabelle D’Antonio, Emma Tucker, Jessie Yeung, Dalia Faheid, Amarachi Orie, Michelle Shen, Michael Williams, Maureen. “Live Updates: Trump Survives Assassination Attempt | CNN Politics.” CNN, 13 July 2024, https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/election-biden-trump-07-13-24.
Christensen, Laerke. “Rumor Claiming Rob Reiner Said He Wished Would-Be Trump Assassin ‘hadn’t Missed’ Is Unfounded.” Snopes, 17 Dec. 2025, https://www.snopes.com//news/2025/12/17/reiner-trump-assassination-attempt/.
Jacobs, Julia, and Clay Risen. “Rob Reiner, Actor Who Went on to Direct Classic Films, Dies at 78.” The New York Times, 15 Dec. 2025, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/15/movies/rob-reiner-dead.html.
Scribner, Herb. “Trump Mocks Rob Reiner after Death. Here’s What Reiner Said about Trump and Charlie Kirk.” Axios, 15 Dec. 2025, https://www.axios.com/2025/12/15/rob-reiner-death-trump-charlie-kirk.
Trump Defends His Criticism of Killed Hollywood Director Rob Reiner. 16 Dec. 2025, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c7413d9xvkeo.
