POLITICS
Complete list of US presidents and presidential candidates involved in assassinations or murder attempts
61 years after the JFK assassination, we take a look at other presidents and presidential candidates who were assassinated or an attempt was made on their lives.
Former US president Donald Trump was the subject of an assassination attempt on July 13, 2024, as the Republican Party’s presumptive nominee for the 2024 presidential election campaigned at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Trump was injured when a shooter - since named as Thomas Matthew Brooks - opened fire from what the US Secret Service described as an “elevated position outside of the rally venue”. A bullet grazed Trump’s right ear, while one spectator was killed and another two were critically injured. Reacting to the assassination attempt, current president Joe Biden - who is set to face Trump in November’s election - described the shooting as “sick”. “We cannot allow for this to be happening,” Biden said. “We cannot be like this. We cannot condone this.”
Below, we take a look at other US presidents and presidential candidates who have been the target of assassination attempts - both successful and unsuccessful.
US Presidents assassinations and attempts on their lives
- 1865 President Abraham Lincoln was shot and killed by John Wilkes Booth
- 1881 President James A. Garfield was killed by Charles J. Guiteau
- 1901 President William McKinley was shot and killed by Leon Czolgosz
- 1963 President John F. Kennedy was shot and killed by Lee Harvey Oswald
- 1981 President Ronald Reagn was shot by John Hinkcley Jr. and subsequently survived the attempt on his life.
Theodore Roosevelt shot during 1912 campaign
In 1912, Progressive Party nominee Theodore Roosevelt was shot while campaigning in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a month ahead of that year’s presidential election. Roosevelt, who had previously been US president from 1901 to 1909, was shot by John Schrank, a German-American tavern owner. Schrank’s bullet hit Roosevelt in the chest, but it was slowed down by passing through the candidate’s steel eyeglass case and a thick set of papers in his overcoat.
Despite having a bullet lodged in his chest, Roosevelt insisted on giving his planned speech at the Milwaukee Auditorium. “This may be my last talk in this cause to our people,” he said, per the Library of Congress. Referring to the Progressives’ nickname, he also declared: “It takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose.”
Roosevelt was later taken to hospital in Milwaukee, where he was monitored for a week before being released and continuing his presidential campaign. In November, he lost the election to Democratic candidate Woodrow Wilson. Schrank was declared legally insane, and was committed to a mental hospital. He died in September 1943.
RFK assassinated ahead of 1968 election
Fifty-six years ago, Democratic candidate Robert F Kennedy was shot and killed in California, during his bid to become the party’s nominee for the 1968 presidential election. Five years after his older brother, president John F Kennedy, had been assassinated in Dallas, RFK was killed at Los Angeles’ Ambassador Hotel, shortly after winning the Democratic primaries for California and South Dakota.
Sirhan Sirhan, a 24-year-old Palestinian-Jordanian who has since said he was upset at Robert Kennedy for his support of Israel, was convicted of the murder and sentenced to death. His sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment. Sirhan Sirhan - who maintains that he has no memory of the assassination - was paroled in 2021.
After Robert Kennedy’s assassination, Hubert Humphrey went on to secure the 1968 Democratic nomination, but lost the election to Republican Richard Nixon.
George Wallace paralysed by fame-seeking gunman
Four years later, another Democratic candidate, George Wallace, was shot while campaigning in Laurel, Maryland. Wallace, who had three spells as the governor of Alabama, survived the May 1972 assassination attempt but was left paralysed from the waist down. Two months after the attack, he pulled out of the race for the Democratic Party nomination, which finally went to George McGovern. McGovern was later beaten by Nixon in the 1972 presidential election.
Wallace’s attacker, an unemployed busboy named Arthur Bremer, later said in his book An Assassin’s Diary that he had launched an attempt on the candidate’s life not for ideological motives, but because he wished to be famous. Bremer also revealed that he had considered targeting Nixon.
After being convicted of attempted murder in August 1972, Bremer was sentenced to 63 years in prison, before this was reduced to 53 years on appeal. He was released in 2007.