Trump and the recurring assassin

ANOTHER gunman, another seemingly close scrape with destiny. Even in a country with a grim history of political violence, US President Donald Trump certainly seems to attract more would-be assassins than others.

By the time he had been whisked back to the White House from the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner, Trump was in an almost routine frame of mind. He had studied the history of assassinations, he told the glamorously attired press assembly.

He concluded that only the most significant figures, such as Abraham Lincoln, are targeted. “And I hate to say I’m honoured by that, but I’ve done a lot,” he said.

Though mass shootings are part of the texture of American life – a week ago, a man killed eight children in Louisiana in a tragedy that only briefly made the headlines – the last US president to be murdered was John F Kennedy in 1963.

The shooting on Saturday (Apr 25) was the third assassination attempt on Trump in less than two years. The first was in July 2024, when his ear was grazed by the bullet while he was speaking at a Pennsylvania rally. It boosted his re-election chances.

The Republican convention a week later was subsumed by the theme that Trump had been saved by God to serve the nation. Two months later, a second attempt at his Mar-a-Lago residence was foiled by Secret Service agents.

This time round, however, any sympathy wave is likely to be more limited. The biggest difference is that the alleged gunman, Cole Allen, got nowhere near Trump. Though the cable news channels built it up as another near miss, Allen was never in the ballroom. Loud cracking sounds were heard, but the president was not that close to danger.

In Pennsylvania, a bloodied Trump pumped his fist and shouted “fight, fight, fight”. That image partly defined his campaign. Saturday night’s incident at the Washington Hilton hotel produced no such moment.

Ronald Reagan was shot and wounded exiting the same venue in 1981. Though he was in the early stages of a two-term presidency, his poll bump was short-lived. It would be a surprise were Trump to get any lift at all.

Yet, he will try to make political hay from the incident. It is common in Maga (Make America Great Again) circles to say that the American left are enablers of political violence by using extreme rhetoric about Trump and others around him.

That line was pushed by Trump himself and his vice-president, JD Vance, following the killing of Charlie Kirk, a Maga influencer, in September 2025. Trump ordered US flags to be lowered to half-mast. Some Americans were fired from their jobs for showing alleged disrespect on social media to the murdered Kirk.

Trump’s poll numbers are in a worse place today. Last week, his approval ratings hit a personal low of below 40 per cent in a clutch of polls. Most tellingly, only 30 per cent of Americans approved of his handling of the economy – a flashing red warning sign for Republicans in the upcoming midterm elections.

The rising unpopularity of Trump’s Iran war is driving his nadir. Shortly before the Hilton incident on Saturday, his Iran negotiating team abandoned plans for a second round of talks in Islamabad after the Iranians said they would not participate.

Ironically, assassination has also played a central role in Trump’s Iran negotiating difficulties.

His Operation Epic Fury began with a deadly strike on the Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Feb 28. Follow-up US-Israeli strikes that took out the head of the revolutionary guard, Iran’s national security chief and other leaders have complicated Trump’s ability to find an empowered team of Iranian negotiators.

Confusion still reigns over who is ultimately in charge, given that the new supreme leader (the late ayatollah’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei) is thought to have been badly wounded.

Either way, Trump’s early zeal for assassinating senior Iranians, rather than the latest home-grown attempt on him, is what is shaping his political future.

“They can call us any time they want,” he said of the Iranians on Saturday. His problem is that Iran thinks that time is on its side. Whether Trump resumes bombing in the coming days, as he has recently threatened, or makes concessions to bring Iran to the table, is anybody’s guess.

The only safe prediction about America’s increasingly fickle and restless president is that he will now surely build his controversial US$400 million ballroom at the White House. It could even host future correspondent dinners. “It cannot be built fast enough!!” Trump posted in the early hours of Sunday. FINANCIAL TIMES