They Kept Coming for Him: The Terrifying Wave of Assassination Attempts on Donald Trump

M Mehran

The blood on his ear was real. On July 13, 2024, Donald Trump raised his fist to a roaring crowd in Butler, Pennsylvania — and in that single frozen image, something shifted in American political history that hasn't fully stopped shaking since. A 20-year-old named Thomas Matthew Crooks had climbed onto a rooftop just outside the rally's security perimeter and fired an AR-style rifle. The bullet grazed Trump's right ear. One spectator, Corey Comperatore, was killed. (LiveNOW from FOX) The shooter was neutralized by a Secret Service sniper seconds later. America exhaled. Trump survived. And most people assumed it was a horrifying one-time event — the kind of thing that reshapes a nation precisely because it almost never happens. They were wrong. Attempt Two: The Man in the Bushes Sixty-four days later, it happened again. On September 15, 2024, Trump was golfing at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida, when a Secret Service agent conducting a sweep of the sixth hole spotted something alarming: a man hiding in the shrubbery, holding an SKS rifle, approximately 400 yards from where Trump was walking along the fifth hole. (Wikipedia) The man had been there for nearly twelve hours. Waiting. Patient in a way that is difficult to comprehend. His name was Ryan Wesley Routh — a 58-year-old roofer and self-described Russo-Ukrainian war activist. (Wikipedia) A Secret Service agent fired at him. Routh fled. He was caught shortly after while driving away. What emerged during the investigation painted a portrait of something more premeditated than an impulsive act of rage. An indictment revealed that Routh had been planning the assassination as early as February 2024, communicating with an accomplice in Mexico who called himself "Ramiro." (Wikipedia) He had sought military weapons. He had written notes to himself about failing. He had even reached out — in a self-published ebook — to Iran, suggesting they should feel free to assassinate Trump themselves. In September 2025, a jury found Routh guilty on all counts — attempted assassination, assault on a federal officer, and multiple firearms offenses. (Ballotpedia) He was sentenced to life in prison on February 4, 2026. (Wikipedia) Two attempts. Two men. And a nation asking: who's next? The Security Failures Nobody Wants to Talk About In the Butler attack, the answer to "how did this happen?" was almost as disturbing as the attack itself. An internal investigation into the Secret Service's handling of the Pennsylvania rally led to six Secret Service employees being suspended without pay. (LiveNOW from FOX) A Senate report faulted the agency for failures in planning, communication, and leadership. Crooks had been flagged as suspicious by local law enforcement before he fired. The warning never reached the right people in time. In West Palm Beach, law enforcement officials acknowledged that the golf course perimeter had not been fully secured because Trump's visit was unscheduled. (Wikipedia) A former president — the leading candidate for the nation's highest office — was playing golf without a secured perimeter. These were not extraordinary oversights. They were systemic ones. And the people paying the price for them were a man whose ear got grazed by a bullet and a father named Corey who never came home from a rally. Attempt Three: The Press Gala Shooting Then came April 2026 — and the most brazen incident yet. Cole Tomas Allen, 31, of Torrance, California, allegedly attempted to breach security at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner, shooting a Secret Service agent in the process. (Al Jazeera) Trump was inside. Federal prosecutors charged Allen with attempting to assassinate the president of the United States — an offense that carries a potential sentence of life in prison. (Al Jazeera) The White House called it the third assassination attempt against Trump since 2024. (Al Jazeera) The press gala — one of Washington's most traditionally safe, carefully vetted events — had been turned into a crime scene. "This is not the first time in the past couple of years that our republic has been attacked by a would-be assassin," Trump told reporters after the shooting. (Axios) A Pattern Bigger Than Politics Step back from the political noise — the blame, the rhetoric, the cable news debates — and what remains is something quietly terrifying. No modern president has faced this many threats. (Axios) The attempts span two years, multiple states, different perpetrators with different motivations, and different levels of planning. One was a young man who left almost no traceable digital footprint. One was a middle-aged activist with months of premeditation and foreign contacts. One allegedly walked into a black-tie dinner with a weapon. There is no single profile. No single motive. No single point of failure to fix and move on from. What there is, instead, is a climate — one in which political violence has gone from the unthinkable to the recurrent. And while the debate rages about what caused it and who bears responsibility, the facts remain: Three attempts. Multiple security failures exposed. One conviction with a life sentence. More suspects charged. More investigations ongoing. And somewhere, right now, law enforcement agencies are working leads they can't yet talk about publicly. The Question America Hasn't Answered The Butler photograph became iconic — Trump with his fist raised, blood on his face, Secret Service agents surrounding him, the American flag in the background. It is one of the most striking political images in modern history. But images don't fix broken security protocols. They don't address the radicalization pipelines that produce young men willing to climb rooftops. They don't explain why a man spent twelve hours in a bush with a rifle, or why someone tried to storm a press dinner with a shotgun. These are criminal acts — each one of them. But they are also symptoms of something larger that American society has yet to honestly reckon with. The bullets keep coming. The fist keeps rising. And the country keeps watching, still not sure what it's supposed to do next.