Right after an assassin tried to kill President Donald J. Trump, his savagely bold reaction was not to bolt from the stage as bullets flew, but with blood dripping down his face, to defiantly pump his fist in the air and shout ‘Fight, Fight, Fight!’
“Trump raising his fist in strength after taking a bullet is the most badass thing I have ever seen a president do,” said Harrison Krank, attorney and Trump supporter from North Dakota on X.
“Wait, wait, wait!” Trump told his agents, who had encircled him in a protective bubble and helped him to his feet. Then, the fist came up defiantly through the protective arms of his Secret Service detail.
Afterward, when asked about that defiant gesture, Trump said, “The energy coming from the people there at that moment, they just stood there. It’s hard to describe what that felt like, but I knew the world was looking, I knew that history would judge this and I knew I had to let them know we are OK.”
In the aftermath of the attempted assassination, we now know President Trump wanted to continue speaking to bring comfort to the crowd, but was denied by the Secret Service, who rushed him off the stage to a waiting armored car.
This isn’t the first time a popular presidential candidate was shot during a campaign rally. On October 14th, 1912, in the Milwaukee Auditorium, candidate Theodore Roosevelt was also shot as he was about to give a speech at a campaign Rally.
In what must be the all-time award winner for ‘Coolest Cat Ever’, Theodore Roosevelt’s opening line was, “Friends, I shall ask you to be as quiet as possible.”
His second line shook the crowd. “I don’t know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot.”
Roosevelt opened his vest revealing his blood-stained shirt to a gasping audience. He said, “It takes more than that to kill a bull moose!”
Then, he reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a bullet-riddled, 50-page speech. Holding the papers in the air Roosevelt continued, “Fortunately I had my manuscript, so you see I was going to make a long speech, and there is a bullet—there is where the bullet went through—and it probably saved me from it going into my heart. The bullet is in me now, so I cannot make a very long speech, but I will try my best.”
It is said that after being shot, Roosevelt coughed and saw that no blood came up assuring him he was not shot through to his lungs. He then decided to go on with his speech and spoke for nearly 90 minutes. The bullet was later found lodged near a rib - the thick speech surely slowing the bullet down saving his life.
There is little doubt that Roosevelt, and Trump too, had a flair for the dramatic in words and actions. Roosevelt had developed his style over a lifetime and it carried him far.
Roosevelt’s approach to assassins, and attacks on what he saw as American order generally, was made clear when then president McKinley was shot and killed in Buffalo NY leading to Roosevelt being hastily sworn in at a supporter’s Buffalo home.
Roosevelt took McKinley's assassination very personally. As Edmund Morris said in his famous books on TR, it "struck at the heart of Roosevelt's beloved American republic."
Roosevelt was furious at the assassin for causing what he thought was “an unforgivable disruption to (American) law and order”. The story goes that, as he was being driven to the train station to travel to Buffalo for his swearing-in, he leaned over and said to his driver, "If it had been I who had been shot, he wouldn't have gotten away so easily. I'd have guzzled him first.”
The uncanny similarities between Theodore Roosevelt and Donald J. Trump both being shot at campaign rallies cannot be ignored. First, they were both former presidents running for re-election four years after their last term. They also unabashedly share strong pro-American values.
Trump, much like Roosevelt, has a strong, even dramatic, personal style. Some might even call both men ‘showmen’. Unafraid to be boldly pro-American, Trump leads with his America First and Make American Great Again slogans.
Roosevelt demonstrated his defiance to the would-be assassin with his bullet-ridden speech and Trump with his fist in the air.
Roosevelt and Trump both developed fighting personalities and communication styles throughout their lives in business and politics with strong family influences. They both hold strong beliefs for their time in history about what America should be and can be that carried them to the heights of the American presidency.
The similarities carry over to location as well. Roosevelt was shot in Milwaukee where, coincidentally, the Republican Nominating Convention began a mere 36 hours after Trump was shot. Trump announced his vice-president pick JD Vance and he will give his acceptance speech at the Milwaukee convention later this week.
There are certainly arguments to be made that Roosevelt and Trump have plenty of differences, and they do, but there are also profound similarities. Hardships and challenges and the undeniable, underlying foundation of the love of America and our Constitution are what formed both men and propelled them to the White House and the presidency of the greatest nation on earth.