I wasn’t shocked, but I was surprised by the attempt on Donald Trump’s life at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday July 13, 2024. Thomas Matthew Crooks came within a gnat’s eyelash of killing the former president. A last second head turn saved Mr. Trump from the fate of Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley and Kennedy.
I wasn’t shocked because America is a violent place, just look at all of the mass shootings in the country that don’t even rate television air time anymore. I wasn’t shocked because of all the “constitutional carry” laws in this country where, in many states, the Second Amendment is all that is needed to own a weapon, so everyone and their brother goes around armed in public places ready to draw down at the first insult. We’re an angrier country than we used to be and more willing to express that anger in intemperate language and other capricious, often deadly ways.
I was surprised because it has been a coon’s age since there was an active attempt on someone in public life. I was a child when John Kennedy was assassinated, and it remains my earliest childhood memory. I watched and reeled with the nation when Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy were shot and killed two months apart. I was becoming politically aware when Wallace was shot and there were two attempts in seventeen days on Gerald Ford’s life. I was in college when Reagan was shot. Still, it was a surprise because although there have been plots and plans to kill presidents, no one has come close for over forty years – until July 13, 2024.
Presidential assassins and would be assassins fall into three general categories. The first is over a disagreement in policy. The last presidential candidate successfully assassinated was Robert Kennedy on June 4, 1968 (he died in the early morning hours of June 5) by Sirhan Sirhan. Sirhan Sirhan remains behind bars at the age of 80 for killing Robert Kennedy, a Democratic Senator from New York, as he exited the ballroom of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles through the kitchen after winning the California Democratic Presidential Primary. Even though shot in the head and mortally wounded, Senator Kennedy asked if anyone else was hurt prior to being rushed to the hospital.
Sirhan was an ardent supporter of Palestine and foe of the State of Israel. We’ve seen the violent emotions that surround Israel, most recently over their pursuit of the terrorist organization Hamas and the invasion of Gaza. Sirhan was on the side of the Palestinians and anti-Israel. Robert Kennedy was a supporter of the State of Israel and so Sirhan shot him.
Richard Lawrence tried to kill President Andrew Jackson as Jackson mounted the steps of the US Capitol for a meeting with legislative leaders on January 30, 1835. This was at a time when presidents had no official protection and still went to Congress instead of dragging congressional leaders to the White House. Lawrence was upset over Jackson’s dismantling of the national bank, which eventually lead to business failures and a nationwide economic collapse (which occurred after Jackson was out of office). Lawrence drew a brace of pistols, flintlock type in those days, and fired. The first pistol when “CLICK”. It was a misfire. Lawrence pointed the second pistol at Jackson and pulled the trigger, “CLICK”. The odds of both pistols misfiring are 1 in 125,000. Jackson beat down Lawrence with his cane and then asked that Lawrence be given the 18th century’s version of the insanity plea and confinement in an insane asylum.
John Wilkes Booth is probably the most famous policy assassin. He loathed Lincoln. In particular, Booth was unhappy that Black men served in the Union Army. It was bad enough that Lincoln was moving to end slavery with the 13th Amendment (that’s why Abe is the “Great Emancipator” and NOT because of the Emancipation Proclamation) but Lincoln was also moving towards Black equality. The 14th Amendment would make Blacks “African Americans”, and the 15th Amendment would let Men of Color vote. Racists thought something had to be done about that, so Booth planned to kidnap Lincoln and trade the President for Confederate prisoners of war. Before that plan came to fruition, the war ended, and the South lost.
So, on April 14, 1865, Booth crept behind Lincoln and shot him in the head. He carved Major Rathbone, who was sitting as a guest of Lincoln’s in the President’s box along with Mrs. Lincoln and Rathbone’s fiancé, from collarbone to abdomen with a wicked looking knife. Lincoln wasn’t the only casualty. While Rathbone recovered from his physical injuries, in 1883 he murdered his wife (the fiancé in the box) was declared insane and spent the rest of his life in an asylum. We believe now he suffered from PTSD along with a deteriorating mental condition and deep depression, because of his Ford’s Theater experience. Lincoln died around 7:30am April 15th and Booth was hunted down like a rabid dog. Booth was shot through the neck by his Union pursuers on April 26th taking three hours to die.
The second group of presidential assassins are those who are just plain crazy. John Schrank shot former President Teddy Roosevelt in Milwaukee, Wisconsin as Roosevelt campaigned to regain the presidency as the Progressive Party Candidate. The circumstances were eerily similar to the attack on Trump. Roosevelt was shot in the chest, but his folded speech and glasses case took the brunt of it. Roosevelt showed the crowd his bloody shirt but said, “It takes more than that to stop a Bull Moose!” The term “Bull Moose” was the nickname of the Progressive Party. Once he finished his speech, Roosevelt went to the hospital where doctors determined that nothing vital was hit and it would do more harm than good to remove the bullet. Teddy Roosevelt carried that bullet in his body for the rest of his life.
Teddy Roosevelt had to keep the crowd from killing John Schrank. When Schrank was interrogated, he said he tried to kill Roosevelt because he was told to in a dream by the ghost of William McKinley. William McKinley was the president who was shot by Leon Czolgosz. It was McKinley’s assassination that made, then Vice President, Teddy Roosevelt the president. Czolgosz shot McKinley because McKinley was pro-business and an enemy of the working man. McKinley was pro-business but hardly an “enemy” of working Americans. Czolgosz was deluded, but not clinically insane, and was executed for his assassination of McKinley.
Charles Guiteau shot President James Garfield while Garfield was waiting to board a train, along with everyone else. It would be like if you ran into President Biden in the departure lounge of the Sioux Falls Airport, all alone. Guiteau believed that his efforts had elected Garfield president – never mind that Garfield was a Civil War general for the Union, a nine term member of the House of Representatives (and so far the only person to be elected President directly from the US House of Representatives), a man who could write an English translation into Greek with his right hand and into Latin with his left hand simultaneously as well as being a fantastic orator. Shot on July 2, 1881, Garfield lingered in pain and sometimes not lucid until he died on September 19, 1881.
Sara Jane Moore tried to kill President Gerald Ford, narrowly missing him (again similar to Donald Trump’s experience) and striking a door next to Ford. When interrogated she said she wanted to kill Ford to spark a Second American Revolution. Why Gerald Ford’s death would have had that effect is a mystery. Moore served 32 years in prison and was released in 2007.
The third category of assassins are those who are trying to aggrandize themselves. Again, there may be overlap between this and the other two categories. John Hinkley, who shot President Reagan, and three other men on March 30,1981, is in this category. Hinkley had been carrying on some correspondence, and even met on at least one occasion, the actress Jodi Foster. Jodi Foster had been a successful child actress who was transitioning into an adult career (ala Scarlett Johansson or Jason Bateman etc.). Foster had taken a break from acting to attend Yale University. Hinkley was obsessed with her.
Hinkley thought that Foster would be interested in him if he were also famous. It’s too bad for Reagan and the other fellas that Foster didn’t reveal then that perhaps she preferred the company of women over that of men. John Hinkley was released from the St. Elizabeth’s Hospital on August 5, 2016 and has embarked on a semi-successful music career.
Arthur Bremer wanted to be somebody. It’s too bad he wasn’t more specific because he chose the path of assassination. First, he stalked President Richard Nixon, but the Secret Service was too impenetrable for him to get close enough armed to do the job. So, his second choice was Alabama Governor George Wallace who then was the front runner in the Democratic primaries for the presidential nomination. On May 15, 1972 at a campaign stop in Laurel, Maryland (again reminiscent of the recent attempt on former president Donald Trump) Bremer shot Wallace four times. Wallace wasn’t killed but he was paralyzed from the waist down and his presidential campaign was over. Bremer served thirty-five years in prison. He was released November 9, 2007 and placed on probation. His probationary period will end in 2025, when Bremer is 75 years old.
Donald Trump is a lucky man in many ways. Trump is a good stump speaker. He doesn’t use notes and doesn’t need a teleprompter. Those facts probably saved his life. Instead of being a slave to a single position so that a teleprompter or notes were visible, Trump was free to move around and change his position. That last minute tilt of the head was the difference between a grazed ear and a John F. Kennedy head shot.
The would be assassin, Thomas Matthew Crooks, fits the profile of most presidential assassins. Young men in their twenties, with marginal social and economic prospects, somewhat dissatisfied with their lives seek to make a grand gesture – for personal fame, to right a wrong or to strike a blow for the country, at least in their eyes.
I would guess that Thomas Matthew Crooks was not clinically insane. Instead, I suspect he viewed Trump as a genuine danger to the Republic. In Trump’s first term he cozied up to dictators, seemed to be asking Georgia election officials to commit election fraud in order to guarantee him a second term, encouraged the march on the Capitol of January 6th and violated a number of presidential norms. On the campaign trail this time around, Trump has talked about using the power of the State to get revenge on his enemies. The political rhetoric on both sides has been inflammatory and not just from the top of the ticket. Many Americans don’t seem to believe in democracy and elections as the change agent anymore. Political rhetoric, for a long time now, characterizes Americans of the other Party to be “the enemy” rather than as fellow citizens or simply adversaries.
Crooks seems to have been a math whiz and something of a nerd in high school. He was employed as a cook at a nursing home prior to his death at the hands of a Secret Service sniper. It is the classic, “I’m better than this and people should know it” syndrome of would be presidential assassins. What his actual motivations were and what his goal was, beyond simply killing Donald Trump, we may never know.