I was hoping that Ethics Alarms history buff and house deep-diver would weigh in on the latest Presidential assassination attempt, and he didn’t disappoint.
Here is Steve-O-in NJ’s Comment of the Day on the post, “Predictable Aftermath To Assassination Attempt #3 That Still Must Be Aggressively Addressed…Somehow”:
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What makes me wonder is that the Secret Service didn’t appear to have run everyone staying in the hotel at the time of the event through whatever databases they had. The would-be assassin didn’t have a criminal record, but recent firearms purchases might have popped, which might have made them look again, see that he hadn’t gone through airport-level security, and made them at least check him out. Be that as it may, there is pretty clear evidence of intent here, between the manifesto, the carefully managed trip, and the hotel stay.
This actually makes four tries for Trump, if you count the one before he was elected the first time where the guy tried to grab a security guard’s gun but got grabbed before he could do much. We still know probably the least about Crooks, the guy who came the closest in Butler, PA, because he was shot and killed at the scene and he didn’t leave a clear paper trail.
I’m aware that few of the presidents were universally popular, and that a lot were divisive and had strong opposition. Andrew Jackson was disliked enough (especially in the Carolinas) that three people tried to kill him, although only one while he was president. Lincoln of course was killed by a Confederate bitter-ender (there were supposedly four other attempts to kill him, including one to kill him as he took the train to his inauguration). Garfield was killed by someone clearly crackers. McKinley was shot dead by an anarchist. Taft, Hoover, FDR, and Truman were all targeted for one reason or another. The two PR independence activists who tried for Truman killed a White House policeman. The anarchist who tried for FDR failed but did get the mayor of Chicago. Then of course there is the murder of JFK, the shooting of Reagan, and failed attempts on the next four presidents. As far as I know, Biden was never targeted.
Most of the presidential assassins and would-be assassins were either insane (Guiteau, Hinckley) or extremists of a lost cause or a cause that never was (Booth, Czolgocz, others). There’s nothing insane about this guy. Either that or most of the Democratic Party has gone over the edge. I don’t think that’s the case, though. A lot of it is just cold hate and arrogance. It’s easy to hate someone in the heat of anger. If you still hate someone when the heat of anger has cooled down, or if you were never all that angry when you decided to hate that person, that’s really a problem.
It’s completely normal to dislike Trump. It’s completely normal to believe that his policies are the wrong ones. It’s completely normal to think he is leading the country in the wrong direction. All of that is at least reasonably debatable and there is room for disagreement. It’s not normal to believe Trump is a pedophile, there is no evidence of that, and in fact there’s more evidence that Biden is (getting too close to young girls, showering with his daughter). It’s not normal to believe Trump is a rapist, there are no findings of any court convicting him of that. It’s not normal to believe Trump is a traitor, because if he could have been charged with treason they had four years to do it in.
Ethics Alarms 
I was unaware of these other assassination attempts on Truman and FDR. Great history lesson and I could not agree more with the analysis
TR was also shot in October 1912, when he was helping elect Woodrow Wilson to the presidency.
I was just reading about this assassination attempt — I had thought the bullet was stopped by the speech he had in his pocket, but it actually penetrated perhaps 3 inches into his chest. He insisted on making his speech whilst bleeding from the wound (the bloody shirt is an exhibit in his presidential museum).
Apparently the would be assassin was upset at TR’s running for a third term, thinking it a violation of presidential ‘norms’. That sound familiar?
But the copy of speech saved his life. And Teddy took it out, covered with blood and with holes in it. He stopped speaking a bit early, apologized, saying, “I have bullet in my chest.” Proof Teddy was nuts, but in the best way.
It’s not normal, but it’s everywhere. My city’s subreddit has a post titled, “All three local candidates running in the Democratic primary for a state House district have criminal histories.” (The article even mentions, “The sitting president was found guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records in 2024, the same year he was elected to his second term”.)
The top post says, “How can we pretend this still matters when the president has over 30 felonies??”
FTA: One candidate was arrested for a DUI. Her second. The first when she was a mayor for a city adjacent to Louisville. Another has been arrested for domestic violence and charged with first-degree strangulation and fourth-degree assault.
A jury found the third guilty of official misconduct in the first degree. She was a social worker at the state reformatory and got in trouble for having explicit phone conversations with an inmate (serial rapist). She lost her job. According to her, it’s because she intimidates white women. (TBF, she would intimidate me,
All have been convicted.
Citing the “34 counts of falsifying business records” is signature significance for bubble-dwelling and ignorance. Even among the tough field of lawfare garbage, that stands out as outrageous.