‘A dangerous profession’: Many US presidents have faced assassination attempts

Donald Trump survived another assassination attempt, highlighting dangers faced by US presidents. He has faced three attempts. Historically, presidents including Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, James Garfield, and William McKinley were killed or attacked in politically violent incidents

New York: “It’s a dangerous profession”, US President Donald Trump said when a reporter asked him about the latest assassination attempt against him. It indeed is: He has faced three assassination attempts, the latest on Saturday, with one attempt during his presidential campaign injuring him. Like him, many US presidents have come under violent attacks, and four were killed.

On July 13, 2024, when Trump was campaigning for president’s elections in Pennsylvania, he had a miraculous escape with the bullet only grazing his ear as he tilted his head to look at a chart projected on a giant screen. It fatally struck a man on the stage behind him, and the gunman who fired at him at the open-air venue from a nearby building was killed by a Secret Service sharpshooter.

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There was a furore over the security lapse, and several Secret Service personnel faced action.

Two months later, on September 15, 2024, a man was discovered hidden in the shrubbery with a rifle at the fence around Trump’s golf course in Florida. A Secret Service agent fired at him, but he fled and was later captured, put on trial and sentenced in February to life in prison.

Like many politicians across the ideological spectrum and judges and other officials, Trump continually gets death threats in a sharply polarised nation. The Hilton Hotel, where Saturday’s attempt against Trump took place, featured in another presidential assassination attempt: It was against Ronald Reagan, who was shot and wounded in March 1981 outside the hotel.

Reagan suffered a puncture to his lung in the attack by a man who was declared insane and escaped trial. The man, John Hinckley, claimed he tried to kill Reagan to impress the actress, Jodie Foster, on whom he had a fixation.

John F. Kennedy was a presidential victim to die. He was killed in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963, by an American who had defected to the Soviet Union and returned to the US. That man, Lee Harvey Oswald, was, in turn, killed by Jack Ruby, who was said to be angry at him, but it gave rise to several conspiracy theories. Oswald shot Kennedy from a building while the president was riding in an open car.

John Kennedy’s brother, Robert, was killed five years later in California while he was campaigning for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination.

Gerald Ford came close to being killed by a member of a cult in September 1975 in California. But the gun pointed at him from a close range failed, and the woman wielding it spent 34 years in prison for it.

An Indian origin man, Sai Varshith Kandula, who rammed a truck at a barrier to the White House in May 2023, said he planned to kill Joe Biden and take over the country. He had a Nazi flag in his truck and expressed admiration for Adolf Hitler. He was sentenced to eight years in prison.

President Abraham Lincoln was the first president to be assassinated. He was shot dead on April 18, 1865, inside a Washington theatre. Lincoln had led the nation in the Civil War, in which he defeated the secessionist states that opposed the abolition of slavery.

Other presidents killed are James Garfield in 1881 and William McKinley in 1901.