Campaigning in Pennsylvania for the 2024 US presidential election, former president and Republican candidate Donald Trump was the victim of an attack. The first assassination attempt in 43 years, following a long list of attacks targeting American presidents.
Andrew Jackson, the 7th American president
Elected in 1829Andrew Jackson survived an assassination attempt which, for the first time in its history, targeted an American president. Orchestrated by Richard Lawrence in 1835, the president owes his survival to luck. The assassin is an unemployed English house painter. Victim of mental disorders, Richard Lawrence thought he was King Richard III of England who died in 1485. As he thought he was the heir to the crown, Richard Lawrence was convinced that the United States owed him an astronomical sum of money. His assassination attempt ends in failure when his two pistols jammed before he could hit the president. Deemed mentally unfit, Richard Lawrence ended his life in the Washington DC government hospital, the first federal establishment for the mentally unbalanced in the United States.
Abraham Lincoln, first American president killed
On April 14, 1865, while attending a performance at the Ford Theater in Washington, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by a derringer pistol bullet. Aimed at the head, the bullet hits the brain and President Lincoln died of his wounds the next morning. Abraham Lincoln was killed for his Union policies against the Confederate States and the abolition of slavery. John Wilkes Booth, a successful actor, launches a triple attack that aims to destabilize the government. If the attempts of his two acolytes who targeted supporters of the president failed, Lincoln becomes the first assassinated president in United States history. John Wilkes Booth and his accomplices were quickly caught by the police. Seven men and a woman will be tried for having participated in the attack. There are four of them, including John Wilkes Booth, to be sentenced to death by hanging.
Theodore Roosevelt, the miraculous
The failed attack on Theodore Roosevelt is closely linked to another murder of an American president, that of his predecessor, William McKinley, 25e American president killed by an anarchist. When McKinley died, Theodore Roosevelt replaced him until the end of his term. In 1912, when he had to give a speech at a meeting, Theodore Roosevelt is shot at point blank range by John Flammang Schrank. He’s an unhinged saloon owner who thought the ghost of William McKinley ordered him to shoot Roosevelt. He was saved by his glasses case and the pages of his speech which slowed the bullet before it lodged too far in his chest. A very good hunter, he knew that if he didn’t cough up blood, the bullet had not reached his lungs. He will therefore finish his speech injured before going to the hospital. Out of danger, he will keep this revolver bullet in his chest all his lifedoctors felt that an operation would be more dangerous than leaving the ball where it is.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy and the “magic bullet”
Probably the most infamous presidential assassination in the United States. Aged only 42, the 35e US President is shot and killed during a parade in his Lincoln Continental car on the streets of Dallas, Texas. Lee Harvey Oswald is named as the shooter of the so-called “magic bullet”. An investigation called the “Warren Commission” was to uncover the attack to avoid political co-optation in the midst of the Cold War. The commission said a single bullet fired 80 yards away would have killed John F. Kennedy by passing through his throat from the rear before also wounding Governor John Connaly. An official version that many observers and witnesses still refute todaystill keeping this attack a mystery.
Ronald Reagan narrowly escapes death
After the assassination of President Kennedy which marked the world, it was Gerald Ford who, in 1975, escaped two murder attempts in two weeks. However, the last American president to to have suffered an attack is Ronald Reagan in 1981. John Hinckley, the man who shot him, is a former member of the American Nazi Party and gun fanatic. He develops an obsession with Jodie Foster after watching the film Taxi Driver by Martin Scorsese, in which she plays the role of Iris, a 12-year-old prostitute. Wanting to make history to try to seduce the young actress, John Hinckley attempts to assassinate Ronald Reagan during a speech at the Hilton Hotel in Washington. Six shots were fired and hit four people, including the president, in the lungs. His life not being in danger, Ronald Reagan quickly recovered from his injuries. The perpetrator of the shots is himself interned in a psychiatric hospital until 2015.