Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
by Andrey Zvorykin
[REGNUM] Overnight, news feeds of users were stirred by the news of an assassination attempt on former US President and presidential candidate Donald Trump. The failed assassin, in accordance with an old American tradition, was eliminated by the Security Service before he could testify, and many versions of the shooter's motives have already appeared.
Former US President Donald Trump during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania
However, assassination attempts on high-level US political figures have become rare, but not unique events.
ANDREW JACKSON
The first head of the United States to be shot in the head of state by an assassin while in office was the 7th President Andrew Jackson. On January 30, 1835, in the Capitol, house painter Richard Lawrence approached Jackson and tried to fire his pistol twice, but it misfired.
The captured criminal justified his actions by the loss of his job, but the president himself had a different opinion on this matter: Jackson was a supporter of weakening the role of the state in the country's economy, which greatly irritated the wealthiest circles, and it was them that the president accused of attempting to assassinate him.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
Much less fortunate was the 16th President Abraham Lincoln. The politician who managed the greatest division in society to date and the Civil War of 1861–65 was assassinated five days after the surrender of the South on April 14, 1865, at a performance of Our American Cousin at Ford's Theatre in Washington.
The assassin, actor John Wilkes Booth, fatally wounded the president with a shot to the head, after which he escaped, but was found on April 26 and killed during his arrest by a police officer.
The assassin was a supporter of the losing Confederacy, and is believed to have cried out "Sic semper tyrannis!" ("Such is the fate of tyrants") as he fired the fatal shot. The wounded Booth's last words were, "Tell my mother I died fighting for my country."
JAMES GARFIELD
The second assassinated US president was the 20th in this post, James Garfield. He was wounded 4 months after taking office, on July 2, 1881. The president was shot twice in the back by Charles Guido.
Guido was an active supporter of Garfield and hoped to get a high position after his victory. Hopes were not fulfilled, and he decided to take revenge.
Garfield's wound was not fatal, the president died as a result of a fatal medical error (it is unknown whether intentional or not), which introduced an infection.
The bullet was removed from Garfield's body only during a post-mortem examination; the wounded man's agony lasted more than two months and ended on September 19, 1881. Charles Guido was hanged on June 30, 1882.
WILLIAM MCKINLEY
Twenty years later, on September 6, 1901, the 25th President William McKinley was assassinated, this time by the 28-year-old Leon Czolgosz, an anarchist.
McKinley, who during his first term restored the country's economy after the crisis and won the Spanish-American War with little bloodshed, was popular in the country and was elected to a second term without any problems.
On September 5, 1901, he arrived at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, and the next day he held a public reception, where he was fatally wounded by Czolgosz, who fired two shots from a pistol. The president, who remained conscious, shouted to the guards: "Take it easy on him, boys."
The captured assassin later confessed that he killed the president out of a belief that no man could have enormous privileges when others had nothing. The wounded president died after an unsuccessful operation to remove the bullets on September 14. Czolgosz was executed in the electric chair on October 29 of that year.
The assassinated McKinley was succeeded by his vice president, Theodore Roosevelt, who held the post until 1909 (first as vice president and then as his own candidate in the 1904 election).
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
In 1911, Roosevelt expressed dissatisfaction with the policies of his successor, William Taft, and his readiness to run for president again as a Republican, but he did not receive sufficient support from his fellow party members. Then, an indignant Roosevelt left the Republicans and became a candidate for the 1912 elections as a candidate for the Progressive Party of the United States.
During the election campaign on October 14, 1912, before a speech in Milwaukee, the former president was shot by John Schrank. The bullet hit him in the chest, pierced his eyeglass case and a 50-page manuscript of the speech, and then lodged in Roosevelt's body.
He realized from the lack of a bloody cough that the bullet had not penetrated his lung, and so, refusing help, he gave a 90-minute speech, beginning with the words: “Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t know if you realize that I was just shot; but you can’t kill Moose that easily.”
After examination it turned out that it was dangerous to remove the bullet, so Roosevelt carried it in himself for the rest of his life. The attempted assassin, Schrank, was declared mentally ill.
FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT
On February 15, 1933, an assassination attempt was made on the life of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who had not yet taken office, in Miami. The shooter, Giuseppe Zangara, was an Italian native who had moved to the United States as an adult in 1923.
On February 15, the president-elect spoke at a rally alongside Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak.
When the motorcade of politicians arrived at the rally site and the car door opened, Dzangara fired and hit Cermak in the stomach. After that, a crowd of journalists prevented the killer from shooting further, and then the police detained him.
The wounded mayor told the president: "I'm glad it was me in your place," and he died in hospital three weeks later.
Zangara was executed in the electric chair on March 20, 1933. He was associated with Chicago mob boss Frank Nitti, who had feuded with Mayor Cermak, leading to speculation that the mayor was the original target.
HUEY LONG
On September 8, 1935, Senator and former Louisiana Governor Huey Long was fatally shot in the Louisiana State Capitol. Long had openly expressed his desire to run for president in 1936, challenging incumbent President Franklin Roosevelt.
The senator was a supporter of progressive economic policies and an isolationist foreign policy, which made him popular with the people but earned him the hatred of the big industrialists and bankers who stood behind Roosevelt and his inventionist policies.
Dr. Karl Weiss, who fired the fatal shot, was shot dead on the spot by the senator's security guards, and died two days later, on September 10, 1935.
On November 1, 1950, two Puerto Rican nationalists attempted to assassinate Harry Truman at his Washington residence. During a three-minute shootout, a guard and one of the attackers were killed, the second was arrested, sentenced to death in the electric chair, but was pardoned by the president and in 1979 amnestied by Jimmy Carter.
JOHN KENNEDY
The most famous assassination attempt in the United States was that of the 35th President John Kennedy on November 22, 1963, in the capital of Texas, Dallas. According to the investigation of the commission headed by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, Earl Warren, President Kennedy was killed by the second shot fired by Lee Harvey Oswald, who fired from the attic of the school book depository building at the president's motorcade.
The number of shots fired is one of the many mysteries surrounding the Kennedy assassination. Other questions include the identity of the killer, the number of shooters, the motives for the murder, and so on.
According to the official version, Oswald was a loner, not connected to any structure, although other versions speak of the KGB (the alleged killer lived in the USSR for several years and was married to a Russian girl) or the CIA, which was at odds with the president.
The matter is greatly complicated by the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald himself, who was shot while being escorted two days after Kennedy's death.
ROBERT KENNEDY
Five years later, on June 5, 1968, John's younger brother Robert Kennedy, the 1968 Democratic presidential nominee and former U.S. Attorney General, was assassinated.
Like John, Robert advocated for civil rights for blacks and a progressive economic course. The situation before the election was extremely tense; on April 4, civil rights leader Martin Luther King, a Kennedy supporter, was assassinated.
Robert had every chance to beat Republican candidate Richard Nixon, but on June 5, at a Los Angeles hotel between two speeches to supporters, Robert took a shortcut through the hotel kitchen, where, according to the official version, he was shot by Palestinian-Jordanian immigrant Sirhan Sirhan.
However, there is a recording of the assassination attempt that was accidentally made, in which about 30 shots can be heard, although Sirhan was armed with an eight-shot revolver, which gave rise to the theory of a second, unknown shooter. Sirhan was sentenced to life imprisonment, which he is still serving.
RICHARD NIXON
On February 22, 1974, Samuel Joseph Byck, armed with a pistol, boarded a Delta Flight 177 at Baltimore Airport bound for Atlanta. Threatened with a bomb in his backpack, he demanded that the plane be flown to the White House to kill Richard Nixon, who was there. After a shootout with FBI agents, during which an airport security guard and the co-pilot were killed, Byck shot himself.
GERALD FORD
The next president, Gerald Ford, suffered two assassination attempts in September 1975. On the 5th, in Sacramento, California, he was shot by Lynette Fromme, a cult member and admirer of serial killer Charles Manson. On September 21, in Los Angeles, leftist activist Sarah Jane Moore attempted to assassinate him.
RONALD REAGAN
On March 30, 1981, President Ronald Reagan was shot by mentally ill John Hinckley, who was obsessed with stalking actress Jodie Foster. The bullet that entered the president's body was removed after a four-hour operation.
When Reagan jokingly told the doctor examining the president's body, "I hope you're a Republican," he responded, "Today, Mr. President, we're all Republicans."
Hinckley was found insane and sentenced to compulsory psychiatric treatment.
BILL CLINTON
The record holder for the number of assassination attempts during a term among US presidents is Bill Clinton, who was the target of more than 30 assassination attempts. During the eight-month period from September 1993 to May 1994, there were four assassination attempts.
GEORGE BUSH JR.
On May 10, 2005, at a joint rally of George W. Bush and Mikheil Saakashvili in Georgia, Vladimir Arutyunyan threw a combat grenade wrapped in a handkerchief towards the speakers, which ultimately stopped the explosion. The presidents learned about what had happened only after the meeting had ended.
Arutyunyan went into hiding and was arrested only on July 20, 2005, killing the head of the counterintelligence department of the Georgian Interior Ministry. The criminal explained his actions by his hatred of the country's new puppet government. On January 11, 2006, he was sentenced to life imprisonment.
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