Former President Donald Trump survived two assassination attempts in 2024, putting him in a club that no one wants to join. While four presidents have been assassinated in office, none have been killed since John F. Kennedy in 1963. The clear lesson of history is that it’s certainly not for lack of effort.
Some of these attempts were more serious than others, and most were foiled by authorities before shots were fired or bombs went off. But there have been numerous unsuccessful attempts to kill sitting or former presidents before this year’s near-misses for Trump.
19th century assassination attempts
Andrew Jackson: President Andrew Jackson was targeted by a jobless painter named Richard Lawrence, who waited in the rotunda of the Capitol building and fired two different pistols at him on January 30, 1835. After the first misfired, Lawrence took out the second pistol as the ailing Jackson charged him and hit him with his cane. Lawrence’s second pistol also misfired before he was tackled by onlookers.
Abraham Lincoln: Before he was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth in April 1865, President Abraham Lincoln survived two earlier attempts on his life, the first of which was planned to happen in Baltimore prior to Lincoln’s February 1861 inauguration. And then in August of 1864, a bullet from a still-unknown gunman struck and passed through Lincoln’s hat as the president was riding to the Soldier’s Home outside of Washington, D.C., around 11 p.m.
20th century assassination attempts
William Howard Taft: President William Howard Taft was in El Paso, Texas, on October 17, 1909, to meet with Mexican President Porfirio Diaz when a gunman named Julius Bergerson was apprehended with a pistol along the procession route, just three feet from Taft and Diaz.
Theodore Roosevelt: On October 4, 1912, a saloon keeper named John Schrank shot former President Theodore Roosevelt — who was running for president again that year — in the chest, breaking one of his ribs.
Herbert Hoover: A plot by Argentinian anarchists to blow up the train carrying President Herbert Hoover through the Andes on November 19th, 1928, was foiled.
FDR: Hoover’s successor, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was repeatedly targeted too. First in Chicago before his inauguration, when gunman Giuseppe Zangara fired five shots at Roosevelt, hitting Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak, who later died of his injuries. Soviet officials also claimed to have thwarted a Nazi plot to assassinate FDR, U.K. Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in Tehran, Iran, between November 28 and December 1, 1943.
Harry Truman: In November 1950, two gunmen — Puerto Rican nationalists Griselio Torresola and Oscar Collazo — broke into Blair House, where President Harry Truman spent his second term. Torresola was killed by a Secret Service agent named Leslie Coffelt, who also died in the exchange.
Richard Nixon: In April 1972, a man named Arthur Bremer made two attempts to ambush President Richard Nixon in Ottawa, Canada, but was unable to line up a shot. In May Bremer shot and seriously wounded segregationist Alabama Gov. George Wallace and was sentenced to 35 years in prison. On February 22, 1974, a depressed father of four named Samuel Byck tried to hijack a DC-9 at Baltimore-Washington International Airport to fly it into the White House and kill Nixon.
Gerald Ford: Shortly after Gerald Ford was sworn in following Nixon’s resignation, The Alphabet Bomber, Muharem Kurbegovic, was apprehended a day after threatening to throw a nerve gas bomb at the president. On September 5th, 1975, Lynette Fromme, a disciple of Charles Manson, took out a pistol to shoot Ford at the state Capitol in Sacramento, California. The gun did not fire. 17 days later, FBI informant and Symbionese Liberation Army sympathizer Sara Jane Moore fired at Ford, missing him but wounding a taxi driver.
Jimmy Carter: On May 5, 1979, a man named Raymond Lee Harvey was arrested outside the Civic Center Mall in Los Angeles ten minutes before President Jimmy Carter was set to give a speech. Harvey had a pistol and blank rounds.
Ronald Reagan: On March 30th, 1981, John Hinckley, Jr. fired six shots at President Ronald Reagan outside the Washington Hilton hotel, wounding the president, two Secret Service officers and White House Press Secretary James Brady. Reagan was seriously wounded but survived to make a full recovery.
George H.W. Bush: In April 1993, Kuwaiti authorities arrested 17 men who they alleged were plotting to kill President George H.W. Bush with a truck bomb at the behest of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
Bill Clinton: There were four different plots to kill President Bill Clinton, including two masterminded by Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden. On November 24, 1996, Clinton’s motorcade was rerouted in Manila, after authorities intercepted a threat and discovered a bomb planted underneath a bridge on the planned route. The only shots fired at Clinton, though, were by Francisco Martin Duran, who opened fire on a group of men who he mistakenly believed to include Clinton on the North Lawn of the White House on October 29, 1994. No one was injured.
21st century assassination attempts
George W. Bush: In 2005, Georgian national Vladimir Arutyunian threw a grenade toward the podium where President George W. Bush was speaking in Tblisi, Georgia, on May 10, 1995. The grenade did not explode.
In May 2022, Shihab Ahmed Shihab Shihab was arrested as part of an FBI sting operation and charged with plotting to kill former President George W. Bush.
Barack Obama: 11 plots or attempts against the life of President Barack Obama, of various degrees of seriousness, were stopped, including in April 2009, when Turkish authorities foiled a plot to kill Obama by a Syrian man posing as an Al-Jazeera journalist. Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez, a right-wing extremist, fired 25 rounds of an automatic rifle at the White House in January 2011 in another attempt on Obama’s life, breaking a window but wounding no one. Four soldiers connected with a right-wing militia were also arrested by authorities in August 2012 for plotting to kill Obama.
Glendon Scott Crawford and Eric Feight, two white supremacists, were arrested in 2013 for plotting to murder Muslims as well as President Obama with a bespoke radiation device. And in February 2015, three New York City men who claimed affiliation with ISIS were arrested when they told undercover FBI agents that they were planning to kill Obama.
Donald Trump: Gregory Lee Leingang made the first of five plots against or attempts on President Donald Trump’s life while he was in office. Leingang stole a forklift and drove it to a Trump rally in Bismarck, North Dakota on September 6th, 2017, intending to flip the president’s limousine. In November 2017, a man associated with the Islamic State was arrested in Manila on suspicion of plotting to assassinate Trump.
On October 3rd, 2018, a Utah Navy veteran named William Clyde Allen III was arrested after mailing a letter laced with ricin to President Trump. In September 2020, a Canadian woman named Pascale Ferrier was arrested while trying to enter the United States and later charged with mailing ricin-laced letters to Trump.
Hillary Clinton: In October 2018, a pipe bomb mailed by Florida man Cesar Sayoc, addressed to Hillary Clinton, was intercepted by authorities. Sayoc also mailed a bomb to former President Obama’s home in Washington, D.C. as well as to other Democratic leaders.
Joe Biden: On May 23rd, 2023, neo-Nazi Sai Varshith Kandula tried to drive a rented truck into the White House to kill President Joe Biden.