Comparing Ronald Reagan/Donald Trump shootings: Context is different, experts say

The attempted assassination of Donald Trump brought comparisons to the 1981 attempt on President Ronald Reagan’s life, though the circumstances and context could make for different reactions than 43 years ago, experts said.

In American political history, there have been at least 15 “direct assaults” on U.S. presidents, presidents-elect and presidential candidates, according to the Congressional Research Service. This includes a grenade thrown at then-President George W. Bush in a 2005 trip to the Republic of Georgia.

Before Trump was shot in the ear at a campaign rally Saturday, Reagan was the last to be hit by a bullet. He nearly died — the bullet was said to be an inch from his heart — but survived and some analysts have said it changed the course of his presidency.

Immediate comparisons have prodded speculation about how Trump will react at this week’s Republican National Convention and how he will be perceived publicly.

But experts said Monday there are limits to the Reagan-Trump comparison.

“I don’t think there is a direct comparison,” said Jim Twombly, a political science professor emeritus at Elmira College. Timing and personality differences play distinguishing factors.

“Beyond the fact that it was an assassination attempt, the two [events] were different,” Marist College pollster Lee Miringoff said. “The harm to each was very different. Reagan nearly died. Trump emerged a few hours later without any long-term injury.”

Reagan was a sitting president. Trump is not. Unlike Trump, Reagan was not in the middle of what’s been called one of the most divisive campaigns in American political history.

When Reagan was shot, he was 10 weeks into his “presidential honeymoon” period when, back then, there was public goodwill when the officeholder began his term.

“There was a goodwill feeling for a new president then, whereas Trump is so divisive,” said Lisa Parshall, a political scientist at Daemen University in suburban Buffalo.

In contrast, not only is Trump not in office, but the shooting occurred days before a GOP convention that is expected to focus on differences and divisions in the country, not unity, she noted.

Analysts have pointed out the difference in the reactions from Reagan and Trump, underscoring personality differences.

“When Reagan was taken to the hospital, he showed great equanimity and cracked a joke — and that helped,” said Gerald Benjamin, a longtime New York political observer and former State University of New York political scientist. He referred to Reagan telling his wife, “Honey, I forgot to duck,” a line that lived on in political lore.

“Whereas Trump kind of started gesturing and saying fight, fight, fight,” Benjamin said, referring to Trump waving a fist at his campaign audience before agents removed him from the stage. “He used the moment purposefully, whereas Reagan did it spontaneously.”

Looking back, Benjamin said, “There is a distance in the country between the reaction when a president is shot and when it’s a non-president.”

In fairly recent history, he pointed to the two attempts on President Gerald Ford’s life in the 1970s, though he was not wounded. And, of course, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963.

There also was the murder of Kennedy’s brother Robert amid the 1968 presidential campaign and the near assassination of George Wallace, who was shot five times at a 1972 campaign event but survived.

Perhaps the biggest difference in a Reagan-Trump comparison: Even though Reagan was coming off an election victory over President Jimmy Carter that changed the direction of the nation, politics in 1981 was nowhere near as polarized as these days.

“We had a greater sense of bipartisanship in 1981 than in 2024, Twombly said. “There was a different tone in the public” discourse.

Once he recovered and emerged at public events, Reagan received warm welcomes and bipartisan ovations, at least in the near term. Though Trump “commands loyalty from his followers,” Benjamin said, the broader reception “depends on his behavior” going forward — starting with the GOP convention.

“There’s a lot of weight on what he does this week,” Twombly said. “How he behaves at the convention, the speeches. All of that is going to have a lot longer impact than on Saturday’s events in Butler, Pa.”

By Yancey Roy

yancey.roy@newsday.com@yanceyroy