For the third time in as many years, President Donald Trump found himself at the centre of a threat to his life, this time at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner held at the Washington Hilton hotel on Saturday.
After an almost two-hour ordeal of being whisked away by Secret Service agents alongside other cabinet members, departing the hotel, the president addressed the nation from the White House.
“That was very unexpected,” Trump said. As the reporters peppered him with questions, one stood out particularly.
Fox News reporter Peter Doocy asked the president directly, “Respectfully, why do you think this keeps happening to you?”
Trump used the moment to draw comparisons with historical figures. “Well, you know, I’ve studied assassinations,” he said. “And I must tell you the most impactful people, the people that do the most — you take a look at Abraham Lincoln… the people that make the biggest impact, they’re the ones that they go after.”
He went on, “I hate to say I’m honoured by that, but I’ve done a lot. We’ve changed this country, and there are a lot of people who are not happy about that. So I think that’s the answer.”
“I’m Not A Basket Case,” Says Trump
The president also addressed how he copes with the constant danger that shadows his public life.
“I lead a pretty normal life, considering, you know, it’s a dangerous life,” he said. “A lot of other people, you know, you read stories where they become basket cases. To be honest, I’m not a basket case.”
The dinner was set to mark Trump’s first attendance at the event since 2015. During his first term in office, Trump declined to attend, and a number of his deputies followed his lead.
Previous Attempts On Trump’s Life
Saturday’s incident is far from the first time Trump has faced a threat to his safety. The most alarming episode came in July 2024, at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. A gunman climbed onto a nearby rooftop that had a clear line of sight to Trump as he addressed the crowd. One bystander was killed in the attack, and Trump suffered a wound to his ear. Security agents shot the suspect dead at the scene. He was identified as 20-year-old Thomas Crooks.
Months later, in September of the same year, another man was found hiding near Trump’s golf course in West Palm Beach, Florida, with the apparent intention of killing him. A Secret Service agent spotted Routh before he could fire a single shot, and he was arrested shortly afterwards. He was found guilty of attempting to kill the president and was sentenced to life in prison in February this year.
In a separate incident in February, a 21-year-old man named Austin Tucker Martin was shot dead after entering Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida carrying a shotgun. The president was not present at the property at the time.