Dallas, Luzerne County (WBRE/WYOU) — Saturday's shooting made former President Trump the 11th president to suffer an assassination attempt.
March 30, 1981 was the last assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan.
28/22 News spoke with Luzerne County Presidential Historian Larry Cook about how Saturday's tragedy will go down in history.
“It was a near assassination. It wasn't just an assassination attempt. He was closer to being killed by a bullet than we originally thought,” Cook said.
Fast forward to July 13, 2024, and President Donald Trump went into hiding after a shooting occurred during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
The former president was wounded in the ear, while one spectator was killed, two were wounded, and the gunman was killed.
“In American history, 11 presidents have suffered significant assassination attempts, but as of Saturday night, that number is now at 10,” Cook said.
“In 1912, Teddy Roosevelt was a former president seeking to retake the White House as a third-party candidate for the Bull Moose Party. He was campaigning in Milwaukee, Wisconsin when an assailant appeared in a crowd and shot the former president in the chest.”
Milwaukee has also been in the news this week as President Trump arrived there on Sunday to attend the Republican National Convention in the wake of Saturday's shooting.
“People will still be talking about this in 20 years, 50 years, 100 years and beyond,” Cook said.
Cook said experiencing an event of this magnitude shows where we are in history and that Americans need to keep all the victims in mind.
“We have to keep them in our thoughts and our prayers, and we have to understand that this really affects our entire country. You know, an attack on one of our leaders, our former leader, is an attack on all of us. It's an attack on our country, it's an attack on our freedoms and our democracy,” he added.
Cook will host a talk Monday night at Hoyt Library in Kingston about the Secret Service and his experiences working for the agency.
