If it is confirmed that Donald Trump was the target of a man who opened fire on security staff at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, the incident could be treated as a third assassination attempt on him. In that case, Trump would be among the American presidents with the highest number of recorded assassination attempts, he writes Morning.
The first assassination attempt on Trump took place in July 2024 in Pennsylvania, when he was shot in the ear by Thomas Matthew Crooks at a campaign rally. The second came a few months later at his golf course in Florida, where Ryan Wesley Routh was waiting for him with a rifle.
In last night’s incident, Trump and first lady Melania Trump were evacuated from the dinner after a gunman opened fire near a security checkpoint. One member of the Secret Service was hit, but was protected by a bulletproof vest. About two hours after the incident, and after the suspect was taken into custody, Trump told reporters at the White House that the wounded security guard was in “good condition” and that the attacker’s motives were not yet known.
Since Trump successfully capitalized on previous assassination attempts politically – he turned the wounding in Pennsylvania, for example, into election mythology, and the photo of his bloodied face and raised fist became one of the visual symbols of the presidential campaign at the time – the question is how he will try to turn the latest incident to his advantage.
Some analysts are already assessing that the new security incident could benefit him politically, especially at a time when, according to the latest polls, his support is falling to the lowest level since the beginning of his mandate. According to the latest polls, Trump is currently supported by 39.5 percent of Americans, while 56.5 percent do not support him. Voters resent him the most for the war in Iran, inflation and the rising cost of living.
That is why the former Minister of Foreign and European Affairs, Vesna Pusić, is not convinced that this time Trump will be able to turn the incident into a means of political mobilization, as he managed to do in the election campaign two years ago.
– To paraphrase a famous ancient philosopher, you cannot step into the same river twice. In other words, I doubt that this time it will have any impact on his support and the results of the elections for the US Congress this coming fall. Mostly because, as in the first case of attempted assassination, there are many extremely strange and difficult to explain circumstances – says Pusić for Morning.
According to her, it is particularly unusual that the incident took place at the exact moment when Trump’s popularity is dropping sharply and as the congressional elections, i.e. mid-term elections, are approaching.
– Considering the level of security, how is it possible that someone with a weapon burst into the famous dinner with journalists, which has been hated by Trump for years? How is it that this is happening precisely when his support is falling even before the elections? How is it that both times it is about an isolated individual about whom little is heard later? In addition to these two, there was also the alleged attempt on the golf course, but not much was heard about that either – the former minister enumerates.
As far as Trump’s rhetoric after the shooting is concerned, his statements, so far, seem to have been trying to calm tensions. Clearly, he used the opportunity to fit this attack into the well-known narrative about himself as a politician who is attacked because he is “influential” and because he is “doing great things”, and he also emphasized that this “will not deter him from the war in Iran”.
He then described the presidency as a “dangerous profession”, comparing it to auto racing and rodeo. In the end, however, he concluded that the incident was “very unexpected” and emphasized that the White House Correspondents’ Dinner is an event dedicated to freedom of speech and that the attack, paradoxically, momentarily united a room full of Democrats, Republicans, journalists and officials.
