All the people who have tried to assassinate Donald Trump

Trump compared himself to Lincoln

Trump recently praised the Secret Service after shots were fired at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner by a man “armed with multiple weapons” on Saturday.

Trump and Vice President JD Vance were evacuated shortly after gunshots were fired on the premises.

The incident is reported to have happened at 20:35 Eastern Time on Saturday evening (01:35 BST in the UK).

Whether the president was the target of the attack was not immediately clear, but he lated compared himself to Abraham Lincoln, the former president who was assassinated in 1865.

“I've studied assassinations, and I must tell you, the most impactful people, the people that do the most… The people that make the biggest impact, they're the ones that they go after”, Trump told reporters.

Prior to this weekend’s incident, Trump survived an assassination attempt months before the start of his second term, in July 2024.

How many times have there been attempts on Trump’s life?

February 2026

Austin Tucker Martin, who was armed with a shotgun and gas canister, had raised his gun “to a shooting position” before he was shot, according to Palm Beach County officials.

The 21-year-old was believed to have travelled from North Carolina, and his cousin later described the family as “big Trump supporters”.

At the time of the incident, Trump and First Lady Melania Trump were in Washington.

September 2024

As Trump was playing golf in West Palm Beach, Florida, a man hiding in bushes with an AK-47-style rifle attempted to assassinate him.

A 59-year-old, Ryan Routh, fled and abandoned an assault-style rifle but was arrested the same day by the authorities.

Later, he was jailed for life without parole, attempting to stab himself in the neck with a pen after the verdict was announced.

July 2024

Trump, then a presidential candidate, survived an attempt on his life during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

As he spoke at the campaign rally, a total of eight shots were fired.

Trump was shot and wounded in the upper part of his right ear, causing bleeding to his hear.

The gunman, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, was shot dead by Secret Service counter snipers at the scene.

Trump then famously raised his fist to the crowd after the attack, and photographs of a bloodied Trump defiantly were widely shared following the incident.

July 2024

Prior to the Pennsylvania shooting, a Pakistani man was convicted of planning to kill Trump and other prominent US politicians.

This happened following America’s killing of Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani in 2020.

The 47-year-old man, Asif Merchant, was convicted of “murder for hire and attempting to commit an act of terrorism transcending national boundaries”.

According to the Department of Justice, this happened at the behest of Iranian authorities.

Having met undercover officers who pretended to be potential hitmen, he was arrested in 2024 as he was about the leave the US.

Iran, however, denied accusations that it sought to kill Trump or other ⁠American officials.

June 2016

At a rally in a Las Vegas casino, a British man was jailed after trying to grab a police officer's gun, later saying he drove to the event to try to kill the then presumptive Republican nominee.

Authorities said that the 20-year-old, Michael Sandford of Dorking, Surrey, was unemployed, living out of his car and had undergone treatment for obsessive compulsive disorder and anorexia.

After overstaying his visa by 10 months, he was unlawfully in the US.

Later, Sandford was jailed and served around half of his year-long sentence, before returning to Britain.

Some Republicans have questions about the attempt in Butler

In spite of authorities confirming the attempts made against Trump, an increasing number of MAGA politicians and supporters now seem to have doubts about them.

Some Republicans and Trump supporters, with the latest being Marjorie Taylor Greene, have accused his administration of a “cover-up” of the assassination attempt in Pennsylvania.

While Trump narrowly avoided being fatally shot, Corey Comperatore, a former firefighter, was killed while shielding his family from the bullets.

The 50-year-old was shot and killed by Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, at the Butler rally.

His widow, Helen, still has unanswered questions of her own, as she told the New York Post: “All I’ve wanted this entire time was to sit down with the men who screwed up that day and find out why.”

As per The White House, only a “fool” would believe that the shooting was a hoax, however other MAGA allies are also stepping forward to question the events.