Three Attempts, Zero Accountability: Who’s Really Fueling the Fire Against Trump?

No president in U.S. history has been the target of three assassination attempts in which shots were fired by either law enforcement or the shooter himself;

Heritage Foundation

Videos | April 28, 2026

We have had the third attempt on President Donald Trump’s life, where shots were exchanged within two years, recently at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner at the Hilton Hotel in Washington, D.C., last Saturday evening. No president in U.S. history has been the object, the target, of three assassination attempts in which shots were fired by either law enforcement or the shooter himself.

And yet Trump—this is the third time.

So, we’ve had Cole Tomas Allen. We had Ryan Routh, remember, in Palm Beach, and we had Thomas Crooks on the roof in Butler. We also had a young man—Jonathan Oddi—and he was the person who tried to break into Mar‑a‑Lago and kill Trump, and he was killed himself by law enforcement.

No president in U.S. history has been the target of three assassination attempts in which shots were fired by either law enforcement or the shooter himself.

And yet this is Trump’s third time.

Political violence doesn’t happen overnight.

For almost a decade now, the Left has reified the idea that 1. Trump is “literally Hitler” and 2. that harming him is justified—Gavin Newsom and Robert De Niro talked about hitting Trump in the mouth. Shakespeare in the Park substituted Caesar for a Trump look-alike. Anthony Bourdain said he’d poison him.

And that lowers the bar.

And that means people like Cole Tomas Allen come out of the woodwork, argues Victor Davis Hanson on today’s edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In a Few Words.”

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