COLUMN: Trump evacuated amid gunfire. Reagan was shot in the same spot in 1981. It’s happening again in America.

From Butler to Washington: History Repeats Itself

On July 13, 2024, in Butler, Pennsylvania, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks climbed onto the roof of a building located 130 meters from the scene where Trump was holding a rally. He fired eight shots with a semi-automatic rifle. One bullet grazed the candidate’s ear. A supporter, Corey Comperatore, 50, a former volunteer firefighter, was killed while protecting his daughters. The Secret Service shot and killed Crooks within seconds. The investigation later revealed that the building had been identified as a high-risk area by local law enforcement, but coordination with the federal Secret Service had failed.

On September 15, 2024, in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, was spotted hiding in the bushes on the golf course, pointing a semi-automatic rifle at Trump, who was playing. An agent opened fire. Routh fled but was arrested a few hours later on Interstate 95. This was the second attempt in two months. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle had resigned a few weeks earlier following the Butler incident.

Here is the truth that no one—neither in Washington nor in European capitals—wants to state clearly: America has normalized the idea that a president can, at any moment, be targeted. It has accepted this as a fact of the job. It has made presidential courage in the face of bullets a cardinal virtue. Reagan joking in the hospital. Trump raising his fist at Butler. These are not ordinary acts of heroism. They are signs of a sick democracy.

March 2026: The Third Time

And now, Saturday night, the Washington Hilton. The third attempt in less than two years. Trump appears before the cameras shortly after the incident, his shirt immaculate, his tie neatly tied, his tone calm. He refers to the suspect’s anti-Christian manifesto even before investigators have officially confirmed its contents. He thanks the Secret Service. He reiterates that he “is not afraid.” This is pure Trump. The Trump who turns every attack into a political moment. The Trump who, in July 2024, bloodied in Butler, raised his fist and shouted “Fight! Fight! Fight!”—an image that became iconic in his presidential campaign.

The contrast with Reagan is striking. Reagan, in 1981, had joked with the doctors before his surgery. Trump, on the other hand, is just being Trump. He turns danger into a spectacle. He turns the assassination attempt into proof of his legitimacy. And every time, it works. Every time, his supporters see it as a sign. Every time, his critics see it as manipulation. And the country becomes a little more divided.

The Press Secretary with the Bullet in His Head

Everyone’s still talking about Reagan. No one talks about James Scott Brady. The White House press secretary, who was 40 years old in 1981, was walking two steps behind the president when Hinckley fired. The first bullet struck him above his left eye, passing through his frontal lobe. He collapsed onto the sidewalk, motionless, his skull split open. TV networks announced his death within the hour. His official death. Except he wasn’t dead. He miraculously survived an eight-hour surgery.

But survival, in his case, meant thirty-three years of partial paralysis. A wheelchair. A damaged voice. A memory riddled with gaps. Constant pain. His wife, Sarah Brady, spent those three decades fighting for gun control. The Brady Bill, signed by Bill Clinton in 1993, established a federal background check for the purchase of firearms. It was the only major legislative change to come out of the 1981 assassination attempt.

This is the true American story. Not Reagan triumphant. Not Trump raising his fist. But James Brady, paralyzed for thirty-three years, who died from a bullet he received on a Monday in March 1981. He is the one we should be naming. He is the one whose life should have changed the country. It didn’t change it. It never will.

The homicide recognized thirty-three years later

James Brady died in August 2014, at the age of 73. After an examination, the Virginia medical examiner ruled his death a homicide—the 1981 gunshot wound ultimately leading to his death. John Hinckley, who was found not guilty by reason of insanity in 1982, was never prosecuted for this delayed homicide. He was released on parole in 2016 and authorized to live freely in 2022. He plays the guitar. He posts songs on YouTube. He is officially cured.

James Brady is dead. Sarah Brady died a year before him, in 2015, without ever seeing America learn the true lessons from their tragedy. Tim McCarthy, the officer who intervened, is still alive—he has spent his life giving lectures at police academies, telling the same story over and over again. Thomas Delahanty, the officer who was wounded in the neck, never returned to work.

The world’s best-funded agency—and still overwhelmed

The U.S. Secret Service has an annual budget of nearly $3 billion. It employs nearly 8,000 agents. It trains its recruits at the Rowley Training Center in Maryland. It has access to the most advanced technologies in surveillance, biometric detection, and drone neutralization. And yet, in less than two years, it has been overwhelmed three times while protecting the same man.

Why? Because no police system can compensate for a country where more than 400 million firearms are in circulation. Because no security measure is foolproof when a lone gunman decides to act. Because the human perimeter—an agent who pins the president to the ground—remains, in the final analysis, the only effective barrier. Tim McCarthy in 1981. The anonymous officers at the Washington Hilton in 2026. Always, in the end, human bodies standing between the bullets and those in power.

No developed country operates this way. None. France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, Canada—all protect their leaders without having to fortify every hotel, every sidewalk, every bush. The American exception is not a source of pride. It is a pathology. And it is measured in bullets, in coffins, in shattered families.

The Impossible Reform

After every attempt, one investigative commission follows another. After every attempt, budgets increase. Security perimeters expand. Drones multiply. Behavioral analysts work day and night. And yet, bullets continue to hit their targets—or graze them. Because the problem isn’t with security. It lies further upstream. It lies in the culture. It lies in the visceral, identity-defining, almost religious relationship this country has with guns.

The Power of Words in a Democracy Under Strain

Since 2016, political polarization in the United States has reached levels that sociologists describe as “pre-Cold Civil War.” Several recent studies from major American universities show that a significant portion of voters on both sides now believe that political violence could be “justified under certain circumstances.” Twenty years ago, such figures were marginal. The shift is rapid. Dizzying.

Trump has spoken for years of “battles,” “bloodshed,” and a “second revolution.” His opponents have called him an “existential threat to democracy,” a “fascist,” and a “new Hitler.” Each side has fanned the flames. Each side has played a part in turning the other into a legitimate target. And then, when a lone man picks up a rifle and goes to a hotel on a Saturday night, each side blames the other. It’s convenient. It’s cowardly. It’s false.

No one is innocent. Not the Democrats. Not the Republicans. Not the media. Not the voters. Forty-five years after Hinckley, America has had a thousand opportunities to disarm. It has chosen a thousand times to rearm. Today, it is paying the price. Tomorrow, it will pay again. And the day after tomorrow, it will wonder why.

The ecosystem that produces its own shooters

The truth is that political rhetoric alone does not kill. What kills is the combination of that rhetoric with the availability of guns, digital isolation, the breakdown of community ties, and the paranoid certainty that the country is on the brink of apocalypse. The suspect arrested Saturday night is not the product of a tweet. He is the product of an ecosystem. An ecosystem that Reagan, in 1981, helped create by loosening controls. That Clinton slightly curbed. That Bush relaxed. That Obama never managed to reform. That Trump celebrated. That Biden has failed to change.

The Historic Surge in Popularity in 1981

Before March 30, 1981, Reagan was struggling. His approval rating hovered around 59%. His economic agenda—the future “Reaganomics”—faced fierce opposition in Congress. The Democrats controlled the House of Representatives. The media were skeptical. Then Hinckley fired. Then Reagan joked. Then America fell in love. His approval rating soared to 73% in two weeks. His tax plan—the Economic Recovery Tax Act—was passed in July. His budget plan followed in August. Without the assassination attempt, Reagan would never have had the political leeway needed to fundamentally transform the U.S. economy.

That is the paradox no one likes to face. Assassination attempts strengthen presidents. They create a moment of national unity. They put partisan hatred on hold for a few days. Trump knows this. Trump has experienced it three times. And each time, his camp turned the bullet into an electoral victory, record-breaking fundraising, and an iconic campaign image.

I’m not saying that Trump wants to be targeted. I’m not saying that the attacks are staged. I’m saying that the American political system has learned, ever since Reagan, to turn blood into political capital. And that as long as this conversion is possible, nothing will change. That is the curse. Not the bullets. The profitability of the bullets.

The American political machine and its tragic fuel

Historian Rick Perlstein writes that “political America operates by shocks.” Pearl Harbor, the Kennedy assassination, 9/11, the Reagan assassination attempt, Butler 2024. Each national trauma reshuffles the deck. Each trauma produces its political winners. The system does not like continuous peace. It likes ruptures. It likes defining moments. And bullets provide these moments with a regularity that should be terrifying, but which almost reassures those who know how to profit from them.

Butler 2024: The Birth of Trumpist Iconography

On July 13, 2024, in Butler, Trump bled in front of the cameras. Crooks’ bullet grazed his ear. Blood trickled down his cheek. Trump raised his fist. He shouted, “Fight! Fight! Fight!” The photograph by Evan Vucci, an Associated Press photographer, went viral around the world in a matter of hours. It instantly became the most widely shared image of the 2024 presidential campaign. It now hangs on the walls of Republican campaign offices. It’s printed on T-shirts, mugs, and posters. It single-handedly reshaped the narrative of the campaign.

Reagan, in 1981, didn’t have that luxury. The cameras didn’t capture the moment the bullet pierced his lung. They captured the chaos, the confusion, the evacuation. Not the president’s face. Not the blood. Trump, on the other hand, experienced his assassination attempt live, in front of thousands of cameras. In a fraction of a second, he knew exactly what to do: raise his fist, shout, and make the image stick. It was almost perfect. It was almost scripted. And that’s what drove some observers mad with rage—not the attack itself, but the immediate transformation of the attack into propaganda.

And that may be why this particular attempt—unlike Butler’s—won’t send Trump’s poll numbers soaring. Because it didn’t produce the image. And in 2026, without an image, an event might as well not exist. It’s sad to write this. But it’s true.

Washington 2026: The Image That Wasn’t Captured

On Saturday night in Washington, there were no raised fists. There was no iconic image. Trump was pinned to the ground, quickly whisked away, and taken to safety. No visible injuries. No blood. No perfect shot. For the first time since Butler, the attack did not produce its own iconic image. And that’s interesting. Because it forces the narrative to take a different form. With words, not images. With a memory—that of Reagan in 1981—rather than a photographic snapshot. It’s more complex. More fragile. Less politically effective.

400 million firearms in circulation

According to the Small Arms Survey, American civilians own approximately 400 million firearms. That’s more than one gun per person—the highest ratio in the world. By comparison, France has about 19 million firearms for a population of 68 million. The United Kingdom has fewer than 3 million for a population of 67 million. Germany has about 15 million firearms for 84 million people. Japan has fewer than 400,000 for 125 million. The gap is not marginal. It is a matter of civilization.

The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1791, guarantees “the right of the people to keep and bear arms.” This twenty-seven-word phrase has shaped the country’s entire relationship with violence for two centuries. Supreme Court rulings—District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), McDonald v. Chicago (2010), NYSRPA v. Bruen (2022)—have successively reinforced this individual right. The legislative path is blocked. The NRA lobby, despite its recent financial scandals, remains a major political force. And every mass shooting, every attack, every presidential assassination attempt is followed by the same sequence: emotion, debate, deadlock, and oblivion.

As long as this myth persists, presidents will continue to be shot at. This isn’t pessimism. It’s mathematics. You can’t have 400 million guns in circulation, extreme political polarization, and a cultural glorification of the lone vigilante—and then be surprised when a man shows up outside a hotel on a Saturday night with a gun.

Gun Culture and Predetermined Death

The United States records more than 48,000 gun-related deaths each year, including approximately 27,000 suicides and 19,000 homicides. That’s the equivalent of a major airliner crash every three days. No other Western democracy tolerates this level of mortality. America tolerates it. America cherishes it. Because in this country, a gun is not just an object. It is a symbol. It is the tool through which citizens assert their independence from the state. It is the founding myth of the frontier. It is John Wayne’s revolver. It is Davy Crockett’s rifle. It is the flag we raise when we’re afraid of losing everything.

The Names We Forget to Mention

Reagan survived. Trump survived three times. But around them, others paid the price. James Brady, who was paralyzed and later died. Thomas Delahanty, the police officer wounded in 1981, who never returned to work. Tim McCarthy, the Secret Service agent who survived but carried the bullet in his body for decades. Corey Comperatore, the supporter killed in Butler in July 2024—a father and former volunteer firefighter—shot dead while protecting his daughters. And on Saturday night in Washington, dozens of guests, waitstaff, and technicians who experienced a moment of terror whose scars they will carry for a long time.

Media attention always focuses on the president as the target. The collateral victims, meanwhile, disappear into the footnotes. This is a structural injustice. It reveals what the system truly values: not human life, but the continuity of power. Reagan matters. Brady doesn’t matter. Trump matters. Comperatore has become a campaign footnote.

When a country teaches its children to hide under desks to avoid dying, that country has already lost something essential. It has lost its democratic carefree spirit. And a democracy without that carefree spirit is a democracy on life support.

The Psychological Cost of a Nation Under Stress

Psychiatrists now speak of “national post-traumatic stress” to describe the mental state of a segment of the American population. Every mass shooting, every political attack, every institutional crisis leaves its mark. Children practice active-shooter evacuation drills as early as kindergarten. Adults check for emergency exits in shopping malls. News correspondents, like Sonia Dridi on Saturday night, throw themselves under tables without even thinking. It has become a national reflex. And a national reflex is a collective illness.

A Presidency Fueled by Constant Adrenaline

Trump returned to the White House in January 2025 after a campaign marked by two assassination attempts. From the very first months, his presidency was characterized by heightened security measures. An expanded security perimeter at Mar-a-Lago. Restrictions on public appearances. An increase in anti-drone measures. And yet, on Saturday night in Washington, he had to be evacuated for the third time.

The presidential entourage has not officially commented on the symbolic significance of the Washington Hilton. But Trump himself briefly referred to Reagan during his press briefing, without dwelling on it. As if he were refusing to let the comparison take hold. As if he wanted to write his own legend, not inherit someone else’s.

And that’s where everything becomes dangerous. Because a presidency that believes itself to be divinely protected is a presidency that believes itself to be above ordinary laws. A presidency that, with every assassination attempt, sees confirmation of its mission. A presidency that, ultimately, no longer has any internal safeguards—because safeguards are for humans. Not for those chosen by destiny.

The Political Calculus of Martyrdom

And yet, the comparison is inevitable. Reagan was the president who survived. Trump is becoming the president who survives time and again. Three times. Soon four, perhaps. This accumulation creates a messianic narrative that the MAGA movement exploits to the fullest. Trump is protected. Trump has been chosen. Trump has a divine mission. These phrases, which we’ve been hearing at rallies since 2024, are no longer metaphors. They have become a political theology.

Foreign Fascination with American Violence

In France, Belgium, Switzerland, and Quebec, people look at America with a mixture of astonishment and fascination. We don’t understand. We judge. We comment. And yet, we consume it. American TV shows glorify guns. Hollywood movies turn every conflict into a gunfight. Video games endlessly simulate shootings. The whole world has fed on the aesthetics of American violence without ever paying the real price that comes with it.

When an American president is targeted, the whole world comes to a standstill. When a Brazilian, Filipino, or Hungarian president is threatened, we barely bat an eye. Even in relative decline, America retains a symbolic centrality that draws global attention. This centrality is a strength. It is also a vulnerability. Because everything that happens in Washington reverberates around the world—amplified, distorted, and exploited.

And we—the French, the Quebecers, and French speakers in Europe and North America—watch. We comment. We write. But the day a major crisis erupts in Washington—and it will erupt—we will discover that our fate was more closely tied to theirs than we cared to admit. January 6, 2021, had already given us a taste of what’s to come. Saturday night in Washington was another.

Europe: Witness and Accomplice

European democracies look at America the way one looks at a sick loved one whom one no longer knows how to care for. We condemn. We lament. We worry. And then we continue to buy its weapons—F-35s, Patriot missiles, Aegis systems. We continue to depend on its security guarantee—NATO, U.S. bases in Germany, Italy, and Poland. We continue to imitate its political methods—Trump-style communication has spread everywhere. Europe is not immune to America’s illness. For decades, it has been both a witness and a silent accomplice to it.

Forty-five Years of Broken Promises

After 1981, America made promises. It promised to better protect its presidents. It promised to better regulate guns. It promised to provide better care for the mentally ill. It promised to better fund prevention. The Brady Bill of 1993 was a tentative step forward. The 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban, which expired in 2004, was never renewed. Funding for mental health was cut under Reagan and never restored under his successors. Forty-five years of promises. Forty-five years of neglect.

Each decade has produced its own mass shootings. Columbine in 1999—thirteen dead at a high school in Colorado. Virginia Tech in 2007—thirty-two dead on a college campus. Sandy Hook in 2012—twenty six- and seven-year-old children killed in their classroom. Las Vegas in 2017—fifty-eight dead at a country music concert. Uvalde in 2022—nineteen children murdered at an elementary school. And after every tragedy, the same ritual. Emotion. A vigil. A presidential address. Legislative debate. Deadlock. Silence. Then the next one.

That’s what haunts me the most. Not the attack itself. The inevitable forgetting of the attack. The speed with which America digests its own tragedies. This ability to turn a Saturday night of horror into a mere line in a timeline. As if nothing had happened. As if the Washington Hilton hadn’t been, for forty-five years, the recurring scene of the worst.

Why Nothing Will Change After Saturday Night

Saturday night in Washington didn’t kill Trump. So the country will, mechanically, conclude that “no one died,” and move on. It’s cynical. It’s true. Without visible deaths, without coffins on live TV, without widows’ tears, the event will fade from memory in two weeks. Life will return to normal. Trump will tweet. The Democrats will retaliate. The media will hunt for the next sensational story. And the suspect arrested on Saturday will join the long list of lone gunmen whose stories we never really get to know.

A democracy watching itself die in slow motion

Reagan, in 1981, had survived an era when the country was still capable of coming together. Democrats and Republicans had prayed together. Tip O’Neill, the Democratic Speaker of the House, had visited Reagan in the hospital in tears. Polarization existed, but it stopped at certain boundaries. A threat to a president’s life brought people together, not divided them.

In 2026, that world no longer exists. On Saturday night, in the hours following the attack, social media was flooded with posts openly celebrating the attempt. Others accused Trump of orchestrating the event. Public compassion has been replaced by militant cynicism. Institutions no longer have the power to impose a moment of silence. The country no longer mourns together. It is tearing itself apart live, at the speed of notifications.

And we watch. And we report on it. And we hope that the reporting itself will serve some purpose. I’m not sure. I’m no longer certain of much, except for this: what happened Saturday night in Washington, in front of that specific hotel, is not an isolated event. It’s a link. One more link in a chain that’s growing longer. And that will eventually strangle something essential—or snap with a crash that no one will dare to face head-on.

The Precedent That Paves the Way for the Break

Historians of the Roman Republic study the moment when political violence became routine—the mid-1st century B.C. From that point on, the Republic was doomed. Not immediately. Not abruptly. But inevitably. When senators began to be assassinated, when generals marched on Rome with their legions, when institutions were held together only by the force of arms—democracy was already dead. The only question was how long it would take before it formally collapsed.

America isn’t there yet. But it’s getting close. Three attempts on Trump’s life in two years. A riot at the Capitol in January 2021. An attempted kidnapping of the governor of Michigan in 2020. A hammer attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband in 2022. A shooting at the home of a Supreme Court justice in 2022. The fabric of democracy is fraying. Not suddenly. But steadily.

What History Remembers—and What It Forgets

On March 30, 1981, Ronald Reagan nearly died outside the Washington Hilton. In March 2026, Donald Trump was evacuated from the same hotel amid gunfire. Forty-five years, almost to the day. The same building. The same America. A nation that speaks to its presidents with guns, and no longer knows how to speak to them any other way.

This is no coincidence. It’s a signature. The signature of a country that hasn’t come to terms with its own violence. That has turned every assassination attempt into a political opportunity. That has forgotten the names of the collateral victims—Brady, Delahanty, McCarthy, Comperatore—retaining only the iconic images of the surviving presidents. A country that has chosen, at every legislative crossroads, to protect the right to bear arms rather than the right to life.

The suspect is in custody. His manifesto is being analyzed. His personal story will be told in the coming weeks. But the real issue isn’t Saturday night’s shooter. The real issue is the ecosystem that produces, generation after generation, lone shooters. Hinckley in 1981. Crooks in July 2024. Routh in September 2024. The suspect at the Washington Hilton in March 2026. A factory in full swing. A factory that no administration has ever wanted to dismantle.

And yet, on Saturday night, in this hotel that has become a recurring stage for the worst, something held. The Secret Service did its job. The guests were protected. The suspect was apprehended without any additional victims. Trump went home. James Brady, however, wasn’t so lucky in 1981. Neither was Corey Comperatore in July 2024. Let’s remember their names. That’s all we can do. And that’s something.

One more link in the chain

America will start over. That’s what it does. That’s what it has always done. But somewhere, in an elementary school in Iowa, an eight-year-old child may have been watching the footage on repeat Saturday night. A child who will learn, like all the others before him, that in his country, presidents get shot at. That hotels bear scars. That democracies bleed on live TV. This child will grow up. He’ll vote. He’ll never know that the country could have chosen something else. Because no one will have told him that other story—the one where America, one day after 1981, chose to disarm.