Former President Donald Trump is not the first leader to be targeted, nor will he be the last. As long as there have been politicians, or leaders of any kind, there have been those who seek to kill them for reasons of every kind.
As we begin to internalize and rationalize the heinous events of last Saturday, we should consider that there have been so many assassination attempts on American Presidents, Fox News recent graphic on the history failed to include two of them for inexplicable reasons. Of course, everyone is familiar with Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy. Most are probably aware of the attempt on President Ronald Reagan on March 31, 1981, if only because John Hinckley, Jr. was recently granted an unconditional release in 2022. A little more than a century earlier, the attempt on Teddy Roosevelt in October 1912, one that saw him survive and deliver an hour-long speech later that same evening, has also received attention recently for obvious reasons. Less familiar are James Garfield, shot by Charles J. Guiteau on Saturday, July 2, 1881 for political reasons, succumbing to his injuries two and half months later, and William McKinley, assassinated by Leon Czolgosz on September 6, 1901, also for political reasons. Frequently forgotten, however, is the first known attempt on a sitting President in 1835. Richard Lawrence’s target was Andrew Jackson, known as Old Hickory, a legendary war hero, dueler, and outdoorsman; his chosen venue was the United States Capitol Building itself. Lawrence waited behind a pillar on the East Portico for Jackson to pass, hoping to shoot him in the back as the President made his way down the broad steps. He remained unseen as he planned, came from behind the pillar, pointed this pistol, and fired, but no bullet actually emerged from the gun, a rare misfire. Jackson, no stranger to public and private gunplay, quickly turned to face his assailant head on, likely more outraged at the affront than frightened, only to find another pistol pointed right at his chest from a short distance away. Miraculously, this pistol misfired as well, two in a row being incredibly rare even in that era, giving Jackson the opportunity to march back up the steps and begin beating Lawrence viciously with his cane. The legendary Davy Crockett was a Congressman at the time and he, along with a few others, managed to grab hold of Lawrence and subdue him before a sitting President brained a man to death in broad daylight. After an investigation, it was determined that the dampness of the winter day likely caused both pistols to misfire and Lawrence was found not guilty by reason of insanity. He was remanded into a mental hospital, and lived until after the start of the Civil War, dying on June 13, 1821.
Over 115 years after this first assassination attempt, President Harry Truman, who was also a war hero, was targeted by radicals in the Puerto Rico Independence movement, and assaulted by two men acting in concert, Griselio Torresola and Oscar Collazo. The pair attempted to ambush Truman at Blair House, the Vice President’s traditional residency; the President was staying there at the time while the White House underwent substantial renovations. Truman was taking a nap in his second-floor room when Terrosola approached from the west and Collazo came around the house, hoping to shoot the White House Police officer, Donald Birdzell, stationed at the entrance to the residence in the back. Like Lawrence before him, he succeeded in making his approach without detection, but a novice with firearms, he failed to chamber a bullet before he fired. Birdzell heard the sound of the gun clicking, attempted to spin around to defend himself, but a second shot took him in the right knee. Secret Service Agent Vincent Mroz was stationed in the basement, heard the shot fired out front, rushed up the corridor, and gunned down Collazo, taking him square in the chest. By then, two other agents arrived on the scene, riddling Collazo with bullets in what has been described as “the biggest gunfight in Secret Service history,” though it was far from over yet. Torresola, far more experienced with gunfights than his comrade, simultaneously reached a guard booth on the west corner and surprised White House Police Officer Leslie Coffelt, shooting him at point blank range in the chest four times with a German Luger. He also took out Joseph Downs with a shot in the hip before the officer could draw his weapon, but Downs was what we might call a tough son of a bitch. Despite that bullet wound – and two others, one in the back and one in the neck – he managed to make it back to the basement entrance and secure the door, leaving the front entrance as the only way in. Torresola refused to yield or run, however, continuing towards his fallen comrade, hoping to breach the front door, and managing to make it far enough to shoot Birdzell in his other knee. As Torresola took a moment to reload, Truman himself appeared in the window a mere 31 feet away, but before he could take advantage of his luck, Coffelt, who had not yet succumbed to his injuries, struggled out of the guard booth, covered in blood, propped himself up against the wall and let loose, killing Torresola instantly with a shot a couple of inches above his ear. Coffelt would make it to the hospital, but died about four hours later. There is a plaque to commemorate him in Blair House to this day and a room named after him. The entire incident took about 38 seconds. Truman, for his part, was personally grieved in private at the loss of life, but flippant in public, saying he wasn’t frightened because “he’d [already] been shot at by professional soldiers.”
Nor is the United States the only country with a history of assassinations and assassination attempts. Perhaps the most infamous outside of President Abraham Lincoln, was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, the heir to the empire, and his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg on June 28, 1914 which ultimately prompted World War I. As is often the case, the assassination occurred only after a series of tragic coincidences. The plotters had originally planned to bomb the couple’s motorcode as they passed through Sarajevo, but the initial attack missed, injuring some 20 other people. Gavrilo Princip, however, would not be deterred, and he waited for the Archduke after the event. By pure chance, he found himself just a few feet away from their 1911 Double Phaeton after the car took a wrong turn and stalled on a street it was never intended to be on. Princip stepped up and gunned both down at point blank range with a pistol, literally standing on the footboard of the car. Sophie collapsed onto her husband’s lap and never regained consciousness. The Archduke himself lingered for a little while in a semi-catatonic state, mumbling “Sophie, Sophie! Don’t die! Live for our children!” and claiming his injuries were nothing until he passed. Thus, around 16.5 million people died as a result of a stalled vehicle in the wrong place at the wrong time. Sixteen years earlier, the Archduke’s aunt, legendary beauty but emotionally troubled, Empress Elisabeth, known colloquially as Sissy, was stabbed to death by an anarchist in Geneva, Switzerland. She was traveling in secret at the time, but someone at the Hotel Beau-Rivage let slip that they were hosting the Empress. She left the hotel for a walk on the promenade and was approached by Luigi Lucheni, who attempted to peer under her parasol, but when a ship whistled on the lake, he pretended to stumble, stabbing the Empress with a sharpened four inch file. Sadly for Sissy, Lucheni’s original plan was to assassinate a contender for the French throne, the Duke of Orleans, but he’d previously left the city and Lucheni was intent on killing someone of importance, anyone. As he put it, “I am an anarchist by conviction…I came to Geneva to kill a sovereign, with object of giving an example to those who suffer and those who do nothing to improve their social position; it did not matter to me who the sovereign was whom I should kill… It was not a woman I struck, but an Empress; it was a crown that I had in view.” Far more recently, former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who was still serving in the House of Representatives in Japan, was assassinated on July 8, 2022 by Testuya Yamagami with a homemade gun.
I could continue to list an unfortunate number of others, but the conclusion should be obvious: Former President Donald Trump is not the first leader to be targeted, nor will he be the last. As long as there have been politicians, or leaders of any kind, there have been those who seek to kill them for reasons of every kind. From that perspective, I think there are two more important conclusions that can be drawn from Saturday’s assassination attempt. First, as shocking as it sounds, the former President was barely a few millimeters away from having his head blown off on national television because of a massive security failure and a massive security failure alone. The Secret Service is chiefly, if not solely responsible, for failing to secure a nearby rooftop with a clear line of sight to the podium. This is inexplicable and inexcusable, almost enough to make one wonder if the conspiracy theories are real when incompetence is actually to blame. Following the attempt on President Reagan, protocols and resources were radically improved and expanded across the Secret Service and adjacent departments, enough to avoid a public incident for more than forty years and provide a false sense of security that assassination attempts were consigned to the dustbin of history, as the President himself might have said. In reality, we can safely assume that there have been no shortage of attempts or those who considered making an attempt that were either thwarted before they got close enough to come close or dissuaded from even trying. Most of these we wouldn’t know about for obvious reasons, but as late as 2023 the FBI shot a man in Utah who was believed to be plotting against President Joe Biden. As PBS described it at the time, “An armed Utah man accused of making threats against President Joe Biden was shot and killed by FBI agents hours before the president was expected to land in the state Wednesday, authorities said. Special agents were trying to serve a warrant on the home of Craig Deleeuw Robertson in Provo, south of Salt Lake City, when the shooting happened at 6:15 a.m., the FBI said in a statement. Robertson was armed at the time of the shooting, according to two law enforcement sources who spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity to discuss details of an ongoing investigation.” In October 2020, before Biden was even President, another man was arrested after asking on social media, “Should I kill Joe Biden?” This time, The Washington Post described it, “It didn’t appear to be an idle threat, the feds say. The 19-year-old searched online for Biden’s home address and for night-vision goggles, and purchased an AR-15 in New Hampshire, according to federal court documents first reported Thursday by WBTV. At one point in May, Treisman ended up at a Wendy’s within four miles of Biden’s home in Delaware.” There is no reason to believe there haven’t been others, perhaps a much larger number than most of us would imagine. (Unfortunately, the Secret Service itself has been less transparent in the wake of Saturday’s attempt and so far, no one has been fired, but they certainly should be and fast, especially if recent reports that the shooter roamed the rally grounds for three hours prior to the attack and even attempted to bring a rangefinder into the rally.)
Second, the immediate focus on our supposedly heated political rhetoric is misguided at best and has the potential to lead to even more speech controls if not outright censorship at worst. Personally, I would prefer a political world without constant comparison to murderous tyrants like Adolph Hitler and Joseph Stalin, much less idiots who take to social media and claim they’re sorry the shooter missed, but otherwise political rhetoric has been heated since the Founding for a reason. Patrick Henry said “Give me liberty or give me death,” not “Give me some small measure of freedom or a placid retirement from politics” because one statement is powerful and persuasive, the other not so much. Oddly, I find myself agreeing with the progressives at Vox.com in this regard, when they noted “Yes, it’s still fair to call Trump a threat to democracy. The attempt on his life shouldn’t cow his critics.” As they framed it, “Donald Trump really does present a threat to the norms of liberal democracy and the welfare of millions of US residents. Joe Biden truly supports the legality of medical procedures that some Christian conservatives believe to be murder. Rhetoric that describes in good faith our polity’s disputes will imply that our elections have life-or-death stakes — because they do. Political violence is not wrong because our conflicts aren’t profound. It’s wrong because it undermines democracy.” From a more conservative point of view, I truly believe that President Biden – through his massive government overreach, high taxes, lax immigration, and weakness around the world – is actively destroying the country I love and nothing should stop me from saying it. You might agree or disagree. You might argue that I am exaggerating, and you can surely argue that the President himself doesn’t see it that way, believing for some reason that more centralized control over our lives is better for us somehow, but neither of our opinions forestalls the essential debate about the future of the country. This should be doubly true when you accept the sad reality that the great majority of assassins or would-be assassins are mentally deranged, not rational people acting for legitimate political reasons. At this point, we have no idea why Mathew Crooks decided to make an attempt on former President Trump’s life. He might have been partially inspired by claims the former President is an American Hitler and decided to take matters into his own hands, or he could just be as crazy as Andrew Jackson and Teddy Roosevelt’s assailants, acting for no reason whatsoever, believing a ghost told them to do it. Whatever the case, we cannot let the actions of a madman dictate the bounds of our discourse, especially not when he should have been neutralized long before he reached the rooftop with the rifle. Americans have never allowed themselves to be intimidated in the past, we should not do so now.
Confessions of a Conservative Atheist 