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By: Nathaniel Ballantyne
New York – New York – Former President Donald Trump was rushed to the hospital after being grazed by an assassin bullet that pierced his right ear during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. “I felt the bullet ripping through the skin,” said Donald Trump as he walked out of the hospital. The suspected gunman was killed, and two other people were badly injured.
This assassination attempt came two weeks after Donald Trump won his first presidential debate against his opponent, President Joe Biden. Biden, who was out of the White House, was briefed by the head of the Secret Service and Homeland Security about the assassination attempt on Trump. The White House says that Biden attempted to reach out to Trump by telephone to no avail. Several
High-ranking officials in the Democratic Party have already publicly condemned the attack on Trump.
As a former president, Trump has a certain level of Secret Service protection, but the team protecting him is not as large as it should have been. According to the Secret Service, there is a plan to increase his team before the Republican convention this week.
Assassination attempts on U.S. Presidents have been numerous, ranging from the early 19th century to the 2020s. On January 30, 1835, Andrew Jackson was the first president to experience an assassination attempt when Richard Lawrence twice tried to shoot him in the East Portico of the Capitol after Jackson left a funeral held in the House of Representatives Chamber.
The attempt failed when both of Lawrence’s pistols misfired. Since then, four sitting presidents have been killed: Abraham Lincoln (1865, by John Wilkes Booth), James A. Garfield(1881, by Charles J. Guiteau), William McKinley (1901, by Leon Czolgosz), and John F. Kennedy (1963, by Lee Harvey Oswald).
Additionally, three presidents have been injured in attempted assassinations: former president Theodore Roosevelt (1912, by John Schrank), Ronald Reagan(1981, by John Hinckley Jr.), and Donald Trump (2024). In all of these cases, the attacker’s weapon was a firearm.
Many assassination attempts, both successful and unsuccessful, were motivated by a desire to change the policy of the American government. Not all such attacks, however, had political reasons. Many other attackers had questionable mental stability, and a few were judge legally insane.
Historian James W. Clarke suggests that most assassination attempters have been sane and politically motivated, whereas the Department of Justice legal manual claims that a large majority have been insane. In this case, we may never know whether Trump’s attempted assassin was insane or whether this was politically motivated.
Some assassins, especially mentally ill ones, acted solely on their own, whereas those pursuing political agendas have more often found supporting conspirators. We have yet to find out whether the killed assassin had any co-conspirators in his attempt to kill Donald Trump.
In the past most assassination plotters were arrested and punished by execution or lengthy detainment in a prison or insane asylum.
Since the vice president, the successor of a removed president, usually shares the president’s political party affiliation, the death of the president is unlikely to result in major policy changes. Possibly for that reason, political groups typically do not coordinate such attacks, even in times of partisan strife.
Threats of violence against the president are often made for rhetorical or humorous effect without serious intent, while credibly threatening the president of the United States is a federal felony.
Donald Trump is the last former president since Ronald Reagan in 1989 to be shot. The answer to the question of whether this was politically motivated may never be answered. The gunman was shot dead by law enforcement, and without the gunman, it would be hard to make that determination.
Many groups, including the Haitian American Pastors Association led by Rev. Rudy Laurent, are praying for Donald Trump’s quick recovery. According to Rev. Laurent, the attack on President Trump was prophetic and only cemented the need for his reelection as the next president of the United States.
The Republican National Convention is scheduled for Monday, July 15 to Thursday, July 18, 2024, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and we expect increased security, especially around President Trump and his family.
