What do an Elvis impersonator, white supremacists, and a member of the Manson family have in common? Well, they've all tried to kill an American president. These five presidents survived multiple assassination attempts, some by the skin of their teeth.
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00:00What do an Elvis impersonator, white supremacists, and a member of the Manson family have in
00:05common?
00:06Well, they've all tried to kill an American president.
00:09These five presidents survived multiple assassination attempts, some by the skin of their teeth.
00:15President Harry S. Truman came into power at the end of World War II in 1945 and finished
00:20his second term in 1953.
00:22Presiding over the United States' transition from World War II to its decades-long Cold
00:26War with the USSR, the White House quotes Truman as once saying,
00:30"...I felt like the moon, the stars and all the planets had fallen on me."
00:34Truman made a good target for people's woes not once, but twice.
00:38As the New York Times recounted, militant Zionist group the Stern Gang sent some letter
00:42bombs to the White House in 1947.
00:45As for the motivation behind the attack, while Truman supported the creation of Israel in
00:491948, he also advocated for Palestinian sovereignty over Palestinian areas within the Holy Land.
00:56Truman's second survived assassination attempt also featured militant nationals, this time
01:00Puerto Rican.
01:01Two members of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party crept up to the presidential Blair House
01:05shortly after 2 p.m. on November 1, 1950.
01:08Pistols in hand, they hoped to shoot through Secret Service guards and kill Truman.
01:13Instead, the inexperienced gunmen bungled the job and were gunned down, but not before
01:17one of them mortally wounded a police officer.
01:20The inheritor of Richard Nixon's resignation and the ongoing Vietnam War, Gerald Ford was
01:25nonetheless well-received when he took over Nixon's second term in 1974.
01:30And yet, Ford wound up being targeted for assassination twice within the same month,
01:34both times by ill-prepared women under strange circumstances.
01:38On September 5, 1975, a tiny lady carrying a big gun and wearing a hand-sewn Little Red
01:44Riding Hood outfit walked up to President Ford near Sacramento's Capitol Park as Ford
01:48walked to a meeting.
01:50But rather than shake Ford's hand like he was expecting, the woman lifted her gun.
01:54She was immediately disarmed by Secret Service agents, who found her gun unloaded.
01:58She wound up spending 34 years in prison.
02:01The 26-year-old, Lynette Alice Squeaky Fromme, was a member of the Manson family and wanted
02:06to kill Ford for his supposed crimes against Californian redwood trees.
02:10"...I got tangled in the web, sometimes I wish a spider would've eaten me."
02:15Seventeen days later on September 22, Sarah Jane Moore took aim at Ford as he left his
02:20San Franciscan hotel to head to a nearby political convention.
02:24She got off two shots, missed Ford, but hit someone in the crowd who survived.
02:28She stayed in prison until 2008.
02:31According to the Los Angeles Times, she thought that her actions could save the world.
02:35She had also undergone psychiatric treatment and was arrested a mere two days prior with
02:39a revolver in her purse.
02:41Bill Clinton took over during a stable, prosperous decade in U.S. history from 1993 to 2001.
02:48Nonetheless, his presidency preceded the U.S. War on Terror during the George W. Bush administration,
02:54and thus presaged growing global sociopolitical instabilities.
02:58Such instabilities account for one of the assassination attempts against Clinton.
03:02The first attempt on Clinton's life was far from politically motivated, though.
03:05As Political Rights, 38-year-old Frank Eugene Corder flew a small airplane straight into
03:10the White House lawn in 1994, apparently aiming for Clinton's bedroom but falling short.
03:15The second attempt on Clinton's life came from terrorist organization Al-Qaeda in 1996.
03:21The attempt took place in Manila in the Philippines, where Filipino authorities discovered a bomb
03:25on a bridge and AK-47s in a nearby SUV.
03:28The plot, it seems, was to detonate the bomb as Clinton's motorcade passed over the bridge.
03:33Two years later in 1998, relatedly or not, Clinton approved multiple plans to capture
03:38and or kill Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
03:42Folks might not realize exactly how many assassination attempts Barack Obama survived.
03:46In what is an almost comically long list of foiled assassination plots, many of which
03:51are bizarre, if not daffy, Obama drew the ire of white supremacists, paramilitary organizations,
03:57former U.S. servicemen, jihadists, KKK members with a homemade death ray, a minor actor,
04:03an Elvis impersonator, and more.
04:05Many plots never made it past the planning phase.
04:07Some took place even before Obama took office.
04:10The U.S. Justice Department explained that Marine Lance Corporal Cody Brittingham plotted
04:14to assassinate Obama ahead of his inauguration and was sentenced to more than eight years
04:19in prison.
04:20That same year, in 2008, several white supremacists got caught by Denver police traveling to the
04:24Democratic National Convention in a truck full of guns and meth.
04:28Meanwhile, several members of the paramilitary organization FEAR, aka Forever Enduring, Always
04:34Ready, plotted in 2012 not only to assassinate Obama but overthrow the U.S. government.
04:40A few years later in 2014, Iraq War veteran Omar J. Gonzalez jumped the White House fence
04:46with a knife to hunt Obama.
04:47Out of the numerous other assassination attempts on Obama's life, actress Shannon Gess Richardson
04:52and Elvis impersonator James Everett Dutchka stand out.
04:56In 2014, they both tried mailing Obama ricin in envelopes.
05:00And so, we come to Donald Trump, the most recent president to survive multiple assassination
05:08attempts.
05:09The first two attempts happened during Trump's actual presidency from 2017 to 2021, but have
05:14been overshadowed by the recent shootings against Trump mere months apart in 2024.
05:20The first presidential assassination attempt on Trump featured a forklift as a weapon,
05:24and so falls firmly in the wacky category.
05:27In September 2017, 42-year-old Gregory Leingang targeted Trump during Trump's visit to a North
05:33Dakota oil refinery.
05:34A prosecutor told the Grand Forks Herald, the intent was to basically try to get to
05:38the limo, flip the limo, and get to the president, and he wanted to kill the president.
05:44At some point, Leingang gave up because the forklift got stuck.
05:48Police caught him as he was trying to run away.
05:50The next two assassination attempts featured the ricin in an envelope trick, both of which
05:54failed.
05:55And of course, we've got the attempt on Trump's life by 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks
06:00at a Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13, 2024.
06:04Crooks was shot and killed after firing at Trump.
06:07Take a look at what happened.
06:11Most recently, we've got 58-year-old Ryan Wesley Routh, who took shots at Trump on September
06:1716 while Trump was playing golf at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida.
06:22Routh was apprehended, and facts about his case are currently surfacing.