Four people have tried to kill President Trump in less than two years, an unprecedented record that some blame on the left wing’s virulent demonization of the president, otherwise known as Trump Derangement Syndrome.
Soon after the Secret Service took down the gunman who attempted to storm the Washington Hilton ballroom where Mr. Trump and top members of his administration were seated, the president was ready to go back to his table and resume the White House Correspondents’ Dinner as though the melee had never happened.
After all, attempts on Mr. Trump’s life have almost become a regular occurrence, likely driven, critics say, by nonstop rhetoric from his opponents on the left. They accuse him of being a pedophile, a fascist, a bully, an authoritarian, a traitor and a threat to democracy, among other things.
Republican National Committee Chairman Joe Gruthers on Sunday called the attack “the inevitable result of a radicalized left that has normalized political violence.”
Rep. Ro Khanna, California Democrat, called for a bipartisan commission to examine political violence.
“We should look at mental health issues. We should look at language. But we need to do something to bring the temperature down,” he said.
But the president on Saturday came close to shrugging off the latest attempt on his life.
“I’m not going to be deterred,” Mr. Trump told reporters upon returning to the White House after the dinner was cancelled.
The left’s verbal attacks on Mr. Trump have only become more heated since he took office a second time. Just days ago, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, New York Democrat, called for “maximum warfare, everywhere, all the time” against the Trump agenda.
Mr. Jeffries and other prominent Democrats have in recent months accused Mr. Trump of “running a pedophile protection program,” after the Justice Department initially withheld some of the government files associated with the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
Many Democrats declared Mr. Trump to be a traitor following the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol that they blamed him for instigating.
Some of those same accusations appeared in a manifesto first obtained by the New York Post and allegedly written by Cole Tomas Allen, 31, the man who police said sprinted through a Secret Service checkpoint and barreled toward the ballroom Saturday night armed with two guns and several knives.
“I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes,” Mr. Allen wrote in an anti-Trump screed sent to his family ahead of his attempt to storm the gala. “I experience rage thinking about everything this administration has done.”
Mr. Allen wrote he planned to target administration officials, “prioritized from highest-ranking to lowest.”
Just three months ago, 21-year-old Austin Tucker Martin drove into the secure perimeter at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s Palm Beach residence, armed with a gasoline container and a shotgun. Secret Service Agents killed him. Mr. Trump was not at the residence at the time.
Martin’s motive may have been related to the Epstein files. He sent a message to a co-worker a week before he drove from his home in North Carolina to Mar-a-Lago, telling an acquaintance to “raise awareness” about the Epstein files.
“I don’t know if you read up on the Epstein files, but evil is real and unmistakable,” Martin wrote in a text message obtained by TMZ.
Five months earlier, in September 2025, Mr. Trump got close to facing another attempted assassination on the Trump International Golf Course in West Palm Beach.
Ryan Routh was arrested Sept. 15 after a Secret Service agent spotted him aiming a rifle through the bushes surrounding the golf course, where Mr. Trump was playing nearby that afternoon.
Court documents show Routh harbored a strong dislike for Mr. Trump and was a supporter of then-Democratic presidential nominee and Vice President Kamala Harris. Routh was also making alternative plans to take down Mr. Trump, who was then the Republican presidential nominee.
In documents filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, prosecutors say Routh told an associate, “send me an rpg [rocket propelled grenade] or stinger and I will see what we can do. … [Trump] is not good for Ukraine.”
Mr. Routh also wrote a manifesto, offering $150,000 “to whomever can complete the job,” if he was unable to carry out the assassination.
Just two months earlier, in July 2025, Mr. Trump’s ear was grazed by a would-be assassin’s bullet on an outdoor campaign stage in Butler, Pennsylvania. The president likely escaped death by just a few millimeters. That shooter, Thomas Crooks, was killed by a Secret Service sniper and his motives remain officially undetermined. He may have been suffering from mental health problems and social isolation.
Following the fourth assassination attempt, the president appeared unfazed when he talked to the White House press corps in the briefing room, still wearing a tux, after the dinner was canceled.
“In light of this evening’s events, I ask that all Americans recommit with their hearts to resolving our differences peacefully. We have to. We have to resolve our differences,” he said. “I will say you had Republicans, Democrats, independents, conservatives, liberals and progressives. Those words are interchangeable, perhaps, but maybe they’re not. But yet everybody in that room, big crowd, record-setting crowd. There was a record-setting group of people, and there was a tremendous amount of love and coming together. I watched, I watched, and I was very, very impressed by that.”
Mr. Trump called for the dinner to be rescheduled quickly and said he won’t be changing his agenda, even though he believes it’s made him a target.
Mr. Allen’s manifesto denounced the president’s destruction of alleged Venezuelan drug boats, which he said amounted to “execution without trial,” detention of illegal immigrants and the war in Iran.
“I’ve done a lot. We’ve done a lot,” Mr. Trump said. “We’ve taken this country and, we were a laughing stock for years, and now we’re the hottest country anywhere in the world. We’ve changed this country, and there are a lot of people that are not happy about that.”
