This weekend’s assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump shook the nation as the press searchs for answers and the political class manages boiling tensions within the two political parties.
Naturally, many have compared the nearly fatal incident to the most similar past attempt on a president’s life — the shooting of President Ronald Reagan.
Reagan was shot in the chest by deranged gunman John Hinckley on Mar. 30, 1981, approximately two months into his first term in office. He was 70 years old when the attack took place outside the Hilton Hotel in Washington, D.C.
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The Trump campaign has leaned into the comparisons, bolstered by Trump’s unexpected gestures of strength to the crowd following the shooting.
“I compare President Trump to President Ronald Reagan. You get historic respect for this. This is a historic moment in a historic campaign,” Trump pollster John McLaughlin told the New York Post.
Reporters and commentators scrambled to compile accurate information regarding the shooter, his motivations, and whether Trump was critically wounded.
“I just spoke to my father on the phone and he is in great spirits,” Trump Jr. told Fox News Digital in a statement on Saturday as the situation became more clear. “He will never stop fighting to save America, no matter what the radical left throws at him.”
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Patti Davis, daughter of the former president, published an essay in the New York Times on Sunday explaining the effects an assassination attempt can have on a family tied to politics.
In her piece, Davis recalls the moment she was informed of the attack on her father’s life. She described her assigned Secret Service agents entering her therapist’s office during a session and seeing the look of concern on their faces.
“The day was one of the longest of my life,” Davis wrote. “I didn’t know if my father, Ronald Reagan, would live, and I found out later that the doctors searching for bullet fragments in his chest didn’t know, either.”
After being shot in the ear and ducking to the ground, Trump was surrounded by Secret Service agents ordering him to move towards a van to evacuate the area.
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In an instantly iconic moment, Trump briefly halted his exit to pump his fist at the audience in a gesture of solidarity. Blood was visible on his face as he shouted “Fight!” repeatedly.
Reagan, who did not have such a massive audience to witness the shooting as Trump did, instead made headlines for his disposition entering the emergency room.
“Honey, I forgot to duck,” he famously told his wife Nancy as he arrived at the hospital, quoting famous boxer Jack Dempsey’s remark to his wife after losing the World Heavyweight title to Gene Tunney.
While Reagan’s brush with death is the most common comparison, it was not the most recent attempted assassination of a president.
In 2005, Georgian citizen Vladimir Arutyunian tried to assassinate former President George W. Bush and Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili during the former’s appearance in Tbilisi during a state visit.
The grenade was live and intended to explode, but failed to detonate. Arutyunian was eventually found and arrested by Georgian authorities. He was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison.
Only four sitting presidents have been assassinated while in office: Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley, and John F. Kennedy.
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