– The Washington Times
Four people have tried to kill President Trump in less than two years, an unprecedented record that some blame on the left wing’s virulent demonization of the president, otherwise known as Trump derangement syndrome.
Soon after the Secret Service took down the gunman who attempted to storm the Washington Hilton ballroom where Mr. Trump and top members of his administration were seated Saturday, the president was ready to go back to his table and resume the White House Correspondents’ Dinner as if the melee had never happened.
After all, attempts on Mr. Trump’s life have almost become a regular occurrence. Critics say it is likely driven by nonstop rhetoric from his opponents on the left, who accuse the president of being a pedophile, a fascist, a bully, an authoritarian, a traitor and a threat to democracy, among other things.
Republican National Committee Chairman Joe Gruters on Sunday called the attack “the inevitable result of a radicalized left that has normalized political violence.”
Rep. Ro Khanna, California Democrat, called for a bipartisan commission to examine political violence.
“We should look at mental health issues. We should look at language. But we need to do something to bring the temperature down,” he said.
Still, the president came close to shrugging off the latest attempt on his life.
“I’m not going to be deterred,” Mr. Trump told reporters upon returning to the White House after the dinner was canceled.
The left’s verbal attacks on Mr. Trump have become more heated since he took office a second time. Just days ago, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, New York Democrat, called for “maximum warfare, everywhere, all the time” against the Trump agenda.
Mr. Jeffries and other prominent Democrats accused Mr. Trump of “running a pedophile protection program” after the Justice Department initially withheld some of the government files associated with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Many Democrats declared Mr. Trump to be a traitor after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol, which they blamed him for instigating.
Some of those accusations appeared in a manifesto first obtained by the New York Post and allegedly written by Cole Tomas Allen, 31, who police said sprinted through a Secret Service checkpoint and barreled toward the ballroom Saturday night armed with two guns and several knives.
“I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes,” Mr. Allen wrote in an anti-Trump screed sent to his family before his attempt to storm the gala. “I experience rage thinking about everything this administration has done.”
Mr. Allen wrote that he planned to target administration officials, “prioritized from highest-ranking to lowest.”
Just two months ago, Austin Tucker Martin, 21, breached the secure perimeter at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s Palm Beach residence, armed with a gasoline container and a shotgun. Secret Service agents and a Palm Beach County sheriff’s deputy killed him. Mr. Trump was not at the residence at the time.
Martin’s motive may have been related to the Epstein files. He sent a message to a co-worker a week before he drove from his home in North Carolina to Mar-a-Lago, telling an acquaintance to “raise awareness” about the Epstein files.
“I don’t know if you read up on the Epstein files, but evil is real and unmistakable,” Martin wrote in a text message obtained by TMZ.
In September 2024, Mr. Trump faced another assassination attempt at the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach.
Ryan Routh was arrested Sept. 15, 2024, after a Secret Service agent spotted him aiming a rifle through the fence line bordering the golf course where Mr. Trump was playing that afternoon.
Court documents show Routh harbored a strong dislike for Mr. Trump and supported Democratic presidential nominee and Vice President Kamala Harris. Routh was making alternative plans to take down Mr. Trump, then the Republican presidential nominee.
In documents filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, prosecutors said Routh told an associate, “Send me [a rocket-propelled grenade] or stinger and I will see what we can do. … [Trump] is not good for Ukraine.”
Mr. Routh wrote a manifesto offering $150,000 “to whomever can complete the job” if he was unable to carry out the assassination.
Just two months earlier, in July 2024, Mr. Trump’s ear was grazed by a would-be assassin’s bullet on an outdoor campaign stage in Butler, Pennsylvania. The president likely escaped death by just a few millimeters. That shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, was killed by a Secret Service sniper, and his motives remain officially undetermined. He may have been suffering from mental health problems and social isolation.
After the fourth assassination attempt, the president appeared unfazed when he talked to the White House press corps in the briefing room, still wearing a tuxedo, after the dinner was canceled.
“In light of this evening’s events, I ask that all Americans recommit with their hearts to resolving our differences peacefully. We have to. We have to resolve our differences,” he said. “I will say you had Republicans, Democrats, independents, conservatives, liberals and progressives. Those words are interchangeable, perhaps, but maybe they’re not. But yet everybody in that room, big crowd, record-setting crowd. There was a record-setting group of people, and there was a tremendous amount of love and coming together. I watched, I watched, and I was very, very impressed by that.”
Mr. Trump called for the dinner to be rescheduled quickly and said he wouldn’t change his agenda, even though he believes it has made him a target.
Mr. Allen’s manifesto denounced the president’s destruction of alleged Venezuelan drug boats, which he said amounted to ’execution without trial,’ the detention of illegal immigrants, and the war in Iran.
“I’ve done a lot. We’ve done a lot,” Mr. Trump said. “We’ve taken this country and, we were a laughingstock for years, and now we’re the hottest country anywhere in the world. We’ve changed this country, and there are a lot of people that are not happy about that.”
• Susan Ferrechio can be reached at sferrechio@washingtontimes.com.
• Seth McLaughlin can be reached at smclaughlin@washingtontimes.com.
