On Saturday evening, a gunman opened fire at the Washington Hilton just minutes after President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance and the rest of the dais at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner had taken their seats.
Within seconds of hearing the “pop-pop-pop-pop-pop,” everyone ducked, assuming the absolute worst.
Immediately, people wondered how security could be so lax at an event with the president, vice president, and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson.
Not least of which, because there had already been multiple attempts on Trump’s life. Most notably, as he campaigned for re-election, someone shot the then-former president, an event which galvanized his base.
Coincidentally, the shooting took place at the hotel where, on March 30, 1981, John Hinckley Jr. shot Ronald Reagan.
The president and his allies are now using the incident to make the case for Trump’s proposed ballroom in the East Wing of the White House.
But the shooting reveals that the president has faced unique threats regardless of where he goes. Here’s a breakdown of each of the assassination attempts on the president.
On July 13, 2024, Trump–then a former president running against Joe Biden to return to the White House–held a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. During the middle of his speech, a gunman would open fire on the rally. A bullet would graze the side of Trump’s right ear. As Secret Service escorted the president off the stage as he bled, Trump would pump his fist and mouth the words “fight. fight. fight.” The moment became a rallying cry for the president’s supporters, coming the weekend before the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.
It would later be revealed that Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, was the young man who opened fire on the rally. He would also kill Corey Comperatore, 50. Crooks used an AR-15-style. The shooting led to heightened scrutiny of the U.S. Secret Service.
A report from the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs found that the agency had not communicated with state and local law enforcement and failed to block a line of sight from the roof of the building where Crooks would be found before he was killed. Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle resigned shortly after the shooting.
Two months after the shooting in Butler, there was a second attempt on Trump’s life. Police would arrest 58-year-old Ryan Routh for pointing an SKS-style rifle at the president as he hid in the shrubbery of the Trump National Golf Club in Palm Beach. Routh initially supported Trump but later became critical of him. Routh would write a note saying, “Dear World, This was an assassination attempt on Donald Trump but I failed you.”
Routh would later be found guilty on all counts after a 12-day trial. He would reportedly try to stab himself after he was found guilty, which led his daughter to say, “Dad, don’t hurt yourself.” He would later be sentenced to life in prison.
In the early hours of Sunday, February 22, 2026, Secret Service agents shot and killed Austin Tucker Martin after he allegedly attempted to break into Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. Martin reportedly entered Mar-a-Lago’s north gate with a shotgun and a gas canister. Neither the president nor First Lady Melania Trump was on the premises.
Martin came from a family of self-described “big Trump supporters,” as was Martin. But he reportedly became “fixated” on files related to Jeffrey Epstein, the late convicted sex offender.
