Following the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump, authorities are still trying to determine the motive of the shooter, a 20-year-old man from Bethel Park, Pennsylvania. But the lack of publicly verifiable information about the shooter hasn’t stopped speculation about his political leanings.
In a viral Facebook post, comedian and podcaster Terrence K. Williams argued that the “Democrat Party” is responsible for numerous assassinations and assassination attempts throughout American history, including those of civil rights leaders Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, and former presidents Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, Theodore Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan.
Not only is it wrong to collectively blame these assassinations on “the Democrats,” but each of the assassins or would-be assassins of these prominent historical figures had their own motives.
Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth, a known Confederate sympathizer and supporter of slavery, who detested Lincoln’s role in the Civil War and the end of slavery in the U.S. Booth felt Lincoln did so to carry out a plot to strip Southerners of their right to own slaves, assassinate federal political leaders and maintain control of the Confederacy and its slave system, said Alan Lichtman, distinguished professor of history at American University.
Lee Harvey Oswald was killed shortly after assassinating John F. Kennedy, but before authorities could determine his exact motives. Historians, including Lichtman, speculate that Oswald’s “Communist sympathies” and “connections to Cuba and the Soviet Union” may have had something to do with it, but the truth will never be known. A few months before Kennedy’s assassination, Oswald attempted, unsuccessfully, to assassinate former General Edwin Walker, a conservative independent candidate.
The man who shot King Jr. was James Earl Ray, a habitual criminal who had previously praised Hitler and volunteered for a racist presidential campaign. For these reasons, Ray’s motives were presumed to be racial. “It’s clear that he was motivated by racism,” said Keith Miller, professor emeritus at Arizona State University who studies the civil rights movement. Ray pleaded guilty to murder on March 10, 1969, but claimed innocence a few days later, and King’s family began to suspect that the FBI may have been involved shortly after the assassination.
Thomas Hagan assassinated Malcolm X because of his Muslim faith. He was upset that Malcolm X had publicly criticized the Nation of Islam. “Malcolm expected to be assassinated after he broke with the Nation of Islam,” Miller said.
John Schrank, who attempted to assassinate Roosevelt in 1912, was, according to Lichtman, “a very ardent Progressive Republican” and mentally unstable. Schrank shot Roosevelt as he was preparing a campaign speech, but a folded copy of the speech in his coat slowed the bullet’s velocity. Roosevelt continued speaking for an hour. According to the Theodore Roosevelt Center, a letter found in Schrank’s possessions after he shot Roosevelt stated that he had two motives: his opposition to Roosevelt’s third term, and a dream in which former President William McKinley blamed Roosevelt for his death and encouraged him to take revenge on Schrank.
President Reagan was shot by John Hinckley Jr. for reasons unrelated to politics. Years after the incident, Hinckley Jr. admitted to investigators that he shot Reagan to impress actress Jodie Foster, with whom he was infatuated. “He does not appear to have any direct ties to any political movement or political motives,” Lichtman said.
Much remains unknown about the man who attempted to assassinate Trump, but state public voting records show he was a registered Republican. The FBI said Sunday that the case is still under investigation and that “the investigation to date has determined that[ing] The perpetrator acted alone.”
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