The reality is that every US president in the modern era has been the target of numerous assassination plots. Trump is not so unique in that regard.
During the four-plus years I worked on the staff of US president George W. Bush I often wondered if I would witness what we all saw when a lone gunman tried to rush into the Washington Hilton ballroom to assassinate President Donald Trump last weekend. In fact there were at least three failed attempts on Bush, but I was away or well within the protective bubble and missed them all.
The reality is that every US president in the modern era has been the target of numerous assassination plots. Trump is not so unique in that regard.
The attempt last weekend was particularly gripping because it was captured from several angles by journalists who instinctively reached for their phones to record the chaos. We saw the alarm on first lady Melania Trump’s face at the first sound of gunfire, the waitress screaming that she did not want to die, and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr being whisked away as his wife tried to keep pace.
We also saw incongruous scenes of an elderly banquet-goer calmly finishing his salad as everyone else hid under the table, and a well-dressed woman selecting bottles of champagne and wine to hide in her coat before evacuating the hall.
These were images that broke through the usually fragmented ecosystems of American and international media, tempting numerous commentators to grasp for a single narrative to explain or exploit what happened. Those narratives have been more wrong than right. Yet in each is a cause for some serious reflection.
The most flawed narrative is that America is on a downward death spiral of political violence heading for the apocalyptic scenarios portrayed by Hollywood movies such as Civil War or One Battle After Another.
The consistent pattern in the attempts on Trump and other leaders has been targeted attacks by lone wolves with their own motives... rather than organised violence by one side of politics against the other.
Americans are worried, to be sure, with 85% in Pew polls saying political violence has risen after the high-profile assassinations of conservative pundit Charlie Kirk in Utah and Democratic State Representative Melissa Hortman in Minnesota.
The US Capitol Police also reports 15,000 threats against members of congress this past year, the highest ever. And that follows the out-of-control mob that stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
However, the consistent pattern in the attempts on Trump and other leaders has been targeted attacks by lone wolves with their own motives, often related to mental health, rather than organised violence by one side of politics against the other.
Those old enough to remember will argue that the recent attacks still pale in comparison with the political violence of the late 1960s when terrorist bombings and assassinations of political figures and civil rights activists were weekly news. The current wave of high-profile shootings is damaging for American democracy but there is no evidence that it is in any way replacing the democratic process as the means to resolve political disputes between different groups of Americans, any more than it did in the late 60s.
Nor is this incident a sign that gun violence is on the rise. Gun violence is shockingly high in the US. The power of the National Rifle Association and the structure of the Senate (favouring rural voters) have prevented meaningful controls, which Gallup polls for years have shown most Americans want.
But in 2025 the US recorded the lowest level of shooting deaths in a decade. Mass shootings are horrifying and seem so common that the public is becoming inured to the news, but they account for less than 1% of US gun deaths. Most of those gun deaths (more than 60%) are suicides. The inability to muster political will to control access to guns the way John Howard did after the Port Arthur massacre is perplexing to foreigners and painfully frustrating to most Americans, but that lack of progress should not be taken as evidence of a spreading epidemic, let alone the dystopian images sometimes conveyed in the media.
Predictably, the attempted attack on Trump also is being used to demonise the rhetoric of political opponents. By any objective measure Trump has used the most divisive rhetoric of an American political leader in modern memory, accusing his political opponents of “treason” and calling them “vermin”. When the White House immediately blamed Democrats’ rhetoric for the gunman’s attack, the lack of self-awareness was stunning.
Trump’s Acting Attorney-General, Todd Blanche, then stretched legal and political credulity when he announced the indictment of Trump nemesis and former FBI director James Comey this week for inciting violence because he posted an Instagram image a few months ago of seashells spelling “86/47” (presumably meaning “dump the 47th President”).
Demands for completion of Trump’s controversial East Wing ballroom at the White House in the wake of the shooting also run counter to the norms of an open society. The whole point of the White House Correspondents Association Dinner last Saturday was that the powerful US President attended its event, not the other way around. Insisting that all such occasions be hosted at the White House with the President exerting complete control over the attendees and agenda is not the answer to the security breach that occurred at the Hilton.
At the same time, Democrats and the media should not be released from self-reflection. When journalist Norah O’Donnell used an exclusive interview to confront Trump with the manifesto written by the man who tried to kill him, she was looking for an angry response and seemingly lending a veneer of political legitimacy to the writings of a madman.
Many Democrats have embraced Bush as a kinder example of what Republicans should be like, but when he was in power there were Democrat leaders in Congress who refused to acknowledge he was legitimately elected. (He was because of the US Supreme Court ruling on the Florida vote count and opponent Al Gore’s gracious concession, of course.) The quality of political discourse is not a burden for just one side of politics.
Polls show that 80% of Americans want more civility in national politics and they deserve leaders who appeal to what Abraham Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature”. But were the lone gunmen in Washington DC, Pennsylvania and Minnesota radicalised by the decline of civil discourse or by the endless cesspools of conspiracy and hate they found in dark corners of the internet?
The causality between political discourse and violence is harder to prove than the apparent correlation. Civility cannot be mandated or regulated if it puts at risk the right to free speech and criticism of elected leaders, particularly if one side of politics is demanding the curtailing of speech by the other.
If there is a single action that would bring more lightness to the dark, it would be for leaders to seize on incidents such as this to emphasise what unites Americans.
Finally, there is the heavy criticism of the Secret Service. That criticism is not entirely fair. I exercised with members of the Secret Service most mornings at the White House gym when I worked there. They were always polite, professional and doing more reps than I could. Some of my happiest moments were when the head of the security detail mistook me for one of his agents (sadly, I was more often recognised instantly as the policy boffin I was). No one can watch the videos of those agents responding instantaneously to the shooter’s dash for the ballroom or leaping in front of the President without appreciating their training and dedication.
The chaos in the ballroom was a bit misleading, in fact, since the perpetrator was stopped well before he could even gain access to the same floor. In that sense, the Secret Service fulfilled its mission. Nevertheless, there will likely be a serious review of security protocols. The ability of a hostile individual to check into the hotel with weapons days before the event raises the question of whether a larger group with military training and heavier weapons might have succeeded had they done the same. The Secret Service will probably also review perimeter security and the wisdom of guest lists that include the entire line of succession from the President to Vice-President, Speaker of the House and Secretary of State.
This attempted attack was thwarted but the lessons are clear.
In short, there is no single narrative that captures what happened on April 25 or what should be done to prevent recurrence in future. The causes of this kind of political violence are complex, ranging from access to guns and mental health to radicalised social media, overheated political rhetoric and distrust of institutions. These are not problems isolated to the US, though they come together in a more wicked mix than they do in most developed countries.
If there is a single action that would bring more lightness to the dark, it would be for leaders to seize on incidents such as this to emphasise what unites Americans rather than reflexively resorting to well-worn partisan policy proposals or blaming their opponents’ rhetoric. Trump hit this more positive note fleetingly in his first press conference, but it is not in his political DNA to sustain efforts at national unity.
Yet there is nothing structural about American politics that prevents such leadership. Bill Clinton or John McCain would have reached across the aisle in such a national moment. There are politicians preparing for the 2026 midterms and the 2028 general election on both sides of politics who look to be of similar character. Maybe we will look back on this attempted attack as a data point towards greater polarisation and dysfunction, but historians also may argue someday that it was one more reason Americans came to reject extremism as they have in previous periods of tumult.