Saturday's assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump was the latest violent attack in a long record of similar acts in American history.
According to one presidential historian, this is far more common than people and elected officials believe. The New York Times, Matthew Dallek, a professor at George Washington University, argued that presidential assassination attempts are “endemic to the political culture of this country.”
“This tradition contradicts a kind of widespread American mythical belief in a political system that prioritizes voting over dodging bullets,” Dallek writes.
Chaos and unrest caused by shocking and brutal events rarely bode well for political stability and therefore markets. In fact, political violence and instability are considered a drag on the economy because they create uncertainty. Investors find this unpleasant. Investors and business leaders want a predictable economic environment so they know what to plan for when running their companies and investing their money. If a downturn does occur, they would rather see it coming than be caught off guard.
Political violence can also signal the erosion of the rule of law, which is crucial to minimizing corruption, bribery, theft and all manner of unfair business practices.
“Stability and the rule of law are the way business works,” said Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn and a major Democratic donor. CNBC Interview from last week.
In an interview luck, Dallek estimates that in the 248-year history of the United States, 12 presidents have been killed or nearly killed in assassination attempts, or about a quarter of all presidents. Before Saturday's shooting, the most recent attempt was on recently elected President Ronald Reagan in 1981. Other presidents throughout history have also been victims of assassination attempts: Gerald Ford, Harry Truman, Theodore and Franklin D. Roosevelt, Andrew Jackson and Herbert Hoover. (Hoover was out of the U.S. on a visit to Argentina when activists tried to blow up the train he was traveling on but were thwarted by police.) Four more presidents were killed while in office: Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley and John F. Kennedy.
“A series of politically violent moments.”
Markets, which had already priced in a Trump victory, believed the sympathy the assassination attempt would generate would provide an additional electoral boost for the former president.
On Monday, when trading began for the first time since the shooting, they responded accordingly. Bitcoin, ammunition stocks, the dollar and other securities and assets expected to perform better if Trump is re-elected soared. The broader market also soared, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average rising 700 points on Tuesday to a new all-time high. Dallek said it's hard to draw a direct correlation between the assassination attempt and the economy, but if the assassination attempt is seen as a harbinger of further unrest, it could have a negative impact on the economy.
“If this is a new chapter in a series of political violence, it could have an indirect destabilizing effect on the economy as people worry about unrest in the streets and further violence,” Dallek said.
The FBI said it has seen an “increase” in violent political rhetoric since the attack on Trump. Even before Saturday, there had been research suggesting the likelihood of politically motivated violence had increased in the past few years. Data from West Point's Combating Terrorism Center shows that since Trump took office in 2017, there had been 13 federal charges of ideologically motivated threats against public officials. By the time Trump left office in 2021, that number had more than doubled to 31.
The fact that assassination attempts are relatively common in U.S. history doesn't make them any less important, according to Dallek. “It's not necessarily a normative judgment about assassination attempts, it's a historical reality,” he said.
“Tackling” the “origins” of the presidential assassination
Acknowledging the frequency of these incidents is crucial to ensure that assassination attempts do not escalate into further political violence. “To address the problem, I think the country has to address the causes,” Dallek said.
Dallek argued that the problem of assassination attempts in the United States stems from three uniquely American factors: the easy availability of guns, the prevalence of conspiracy theories, and America's liberal tendencies that lead some individuals to be suspicious of the government.
Gun control is a hotly debated topic that frequently resurfaces after mass shootings and other violent crimes. President Trump's shooting incident was no exception, although this time the debate was much more subdued. Gun ownership is also a decidedly American cultural phenomenon, with one 2018 report stating that there are 120 guns for every 100 people in the United States. Another study, a 2023 Pew Research Center survey, found that just under a third of American adults own a gun.
Conspiracy theories are also widespread, said Liliana Mason, a political science professor at Johns Hopkins University and author. Radical American Partisanship, Books She cited classic examples like Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster to talk about political division in the U.S. “The problem is that these conspiracy theories influence our political structure,” she said.
Conspiracy theories can also influence extremists who act alone, according to Pete Simi, a sociology professor at Chapman University who studies political extremism and violence. “It's easy for individuals to be alone, especially now, because of digital technology, social media and online culture, but they're still immersed in a broader environment that can quite encourage and foster violence,” Simi said.
Many of these conspiracy theories involve a distrust of government that has long been a feature of American politics. In recent years, trust in government has fallen to its lowest level in decades, according to the Pew Research Center. Even if trust rises slightly in 2024, that would mean just 21% of Americans trust the government to do the right thing “most of the time.” Just 2% trust the government to do the right thing “almost always.”
Authorities have yet to determine a motive for the assassination attempt on President Trump, so it remains to be seen whether the Dallek framework applies to this case. That means Saturday's shooting may not have been politically motivated, like when John Hinckley Jr. shot and killed President Reagan in 1981, or when Charles Guiteau killed President Garfield. Hinckley Jr. was a mentally unstable man who shot and killed President Reagan because he wanted to impress actress Jodie Foster. Guiteau, also mentally unstable, killed President Garfield because he believed he was entitled to a consular position in Europe.
Even if the assassination attempt on Trump did not have a clear motive, it opens the door to more political conflict that, if left unchecked, could have economic ramifications. “Violence begets violence,” Dallek said. “And more violence doesn't tend to produce big economic benefits, at least for most Americans.”
