The assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump on Saturday was another violent entry in a long record of such acts in American history.
They are more common than the public and elected officials would like to believe, according to one presidential historian. In an op-ed in the New York Times, George Washington University professor Matthew Dallek argued that presidential assassination attempts are “endemic to the political culture” of the country.
“This tradition contradicts a kind of mythic faith, held widely by Americans, in a political system that shuns the bullet and embraces the ballot,” Dallek wrote.
The turmoil and unrest precipitated by jarring, brutal events rarely bode well for political stability and, in turn, the markets. In fact, political violence and volatility are often considered a drag on the economy because they create uncertainty—which investors detest. Investors and business leaders want predictable economic environments so they know what to plan for as they steer their companies or invest their money. Even if there's a downturn, they’d rather see it coming than be caught off guard.
Political violence can also portend a breakdown in the rule of law, which is critically important to keeping all manner of unsavory business practices like corruption, bribery, and theft to a minimum.
“Stability and rule of law, that’s how businesses function,” Linkedin cofounder and major Democratic party donor Reid Hoffman said in a CNBC interview last week.
In an interview with Fortune, Dallek estimated 12 presidents in the 248-year history of the U.S., or about one quarter, have either been killed or nearly killed by an assassination attempt. Prior to Saturday’s shooting the most recent assassination attempt had been against a newly elected Ronald Reagan in 1981. Other presidents in history have also been the victims of unsuccessful attempts on their life. Gerald Ford, Harry Truman, both Roosevelts Theodore and Franklin D., Andrew Jackson, and Herbert Hoover all survived efforts to kill them. (Hoover’s was outside of the U.S. during a visit to Argentina where activists’ plan to blow up the train he was riding in was stopped by law enforcement). A further four presidents—Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley, and John F. Kennedy—were killed while in office.
A ‘string of politically violent moments’
The markets, which were already pricing in a Trump victory, saw the sympathy the assassination attempt would engender as a further electoral boost for the former president.
When they opened on Monday for the first time since the shooting, they reacted accordingly. There was a rally in securities and assets, like Bitcoin, guns and ammo stocks, and the dollar, which are all expected to perform better under a second Trump presidency. The entire market soared as well, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average rising 700 points on Tuesday, setting a record high. Dallek says it’s hard to draw a direct correlation from the assassination attempt to economic outcomes, but the assassination attempt could dampen the economy if it’s seen as a precursor to more unrest.
If “it is another chapter in this string of politically violent moments, it can have an indirect destabilizing effect on the economy to the extent that people are worried about chaos in the streets, they're worried about more violence,” Dallek said.
According to the FBI, since the attack on Trump violent political rhetoric was “ticking up.” Even before Saturday, there was research indicating that the past few years have been characterized by heightened levels of the possibility of politically motivated violence. Starting in 2017, the year Trump was inaugurated, there were 13 federal charges of ideologically motivated threats against public officials, according to data from the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point. By the time he left office in 2021, that number had more than doubled to 31.
The fact assassination attempts are relatively common in U.S. history, doesn’t diminish their significance, according to Dallek. “It's not necessarily a normative judgment about them, it's a historical reality,” he said.
‘Grappling’ with the ‘origins’ of presidential assassinations
Acknowledging their frequency is crucial to ensuring assassination attempts don’t escalate into further political violence. “In order to address a problem, I think the country has got to grapple with its origins,” Dallek said.
Dallek argued that in the U.S. the problem of assassination attempts stems from three factors unique to America: easy access to guns, the prevalence of conspiracy theories, and America’s libertarian streak that makes certain individuals suspicious of the government.
Gun control is a heavily debated topic that regularly resurfaces in the aftermath of mass shootings or other such violent crimes. Trump’s shooting was no exception, although discussions were much more muted this time around. Their prevalence is also a distinctly American cultural phenomenon with one 2018 report finding that the U.S. had 120 guns for every 100 people. Another study found just under one third of U.S. adults owned a gun, according to a 2023 Pew Research survey.
Conspiracy theories are also widespread, said Lilliana Mason, a Johns Hopkins University political science professor and author of Radical American Partisanship, a book on political divisions in the U.S., pointing to age-old examples like Bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster. “The problem is when those conspiracy theories infect our political structure,” she said.
Conspiracy theories can even influence extremists who act alone, according to Chapman University sociology professor Pete Simi, who studies political extremism and violence. “Especially now with digital technology, social media, and online cultures it's so easy for an individual to remain on their own, but still be immersed in a broader environment that can be quite encouraging and promoting of violence,” he said.
Many such conspiracy theories include a distrust of the government, which has long been a feature of American politics. In recent years, trust in the government plunged to its lowest levels in decades, according to Pew Research. Even a slight uptick in trust levels in 2024 meant that a paltry 21% of Americans trusted the government to do the right thing “most of the time.” Just 2% trusted it to do the right thing “just about always.”
Authorities have yet to determine a motive for the assassination attempt against Trump, so it is still too early to tell if Dallek’s framework would apply in this case. Meaning, it is also entirely possible that Saturday’s shooting was not politically motivated as was the case when John Hinkley Jr. shot Reagan in 1981 or when Charles Guiteau killed Garfield. Hinkley Jr. was a mentally unstable individual who shot Reagan in an attempt to impress actress Jodie Foster. Guiteau, also unstable, killed Garfield because he believed he was owed a European consulship.
Even without a clear-cut motive the attempt on Trump’s life opens the door for more political strife that if left unchecked could spill over into the economy. “Violence begets violence,” Dallek says, “And more violence tends not to be a great economic generator, at least for most Americans.”
