I am not advocating violence.
But, I grow to wonder–which President had the largest number of attempts on his life?
Thwarted plots count.
My first guess is 2, with Gerald Ford.
And on a trivial note, he’s the only one with known attempts on him by women. All the other assassins or wanna-bes going after Presidents or wanna-bes were male.
Are you counting while they were a candidate.
In any case, this page lists a large number of threats against Obama. I don’t know how far along you wanted to be before it becomes a plot.
Many presidents, of course, are tied for “fewest assassination attempts,” at zero. A few are tied at one successful attempt.
This Wikipedia page lists 11 against Obama, eight against Trump, six against Lincoln (including a first attempt by Booth) and five against Bill Clinton.
Granted, some of these were pretty inept attempts, but they all were taken seriously.
Any precedents for the Iran efforts?
I have my doubts that they were all publicized–for security reasons.
I don’t think we can make any headway until we define what counts as an “attempt”. Obviously we’re counting attempts that failed (else the record would be one), but failed at what stage? Some probably failed before there was ever any opportunity for anyone to learn about the attempt.
Gerald Ford lived in a strange time; that produced two unrelated instances of a woman that had it in her head that she needed to assassinate the President. Nothing personal about Ford himself; it’s just that he happened to be President at the time these happened.
He also has the distinction of being, so far, the only President of the United States that got there without ever being elected either President or Vice-President.
Spiro Agnew was elected Vice-President, along with Richard Nixon as President. But then some scandal arose concerning something he had allegedly done in a position he previously held, and it ultimately led to him resigning as Vice-President.
Ford was appointed, not elected, to take Agnew’s place as Vice-President.
And then Nixon got caught up in a scandal, unrelated to Agnew’s, which led to Nixon resigning as President, and Ford taking his place.
I suggest the arrest of the plotters, or at least an indictment.
With the exception of the Iran Plotters, which is a State Run operation.
That wouldn’t count somebody who actually killed a President but was killed himself at the time. I realize this has not happened, but surely you’d want to count it if it did.
Ford was also unique in that he was the only person to ever end up as president who never actually wanted the job.
Strange times, indeed.
I seem to remember that when he ran for president in 1976 there was a “Committee to Re-Appoint the President”.
With the possible exception of George Washington.
I don’t think that Trump expected or wanted to win in 2016.
Not “some scandal arose”. Read Rachel Maddow’s book Bagman. Agnew started taking bribes for assorted jobs like paving contracts when he was a county official, continued collecting money when he was governor, and then even had some contractors drop off money to his VP office.
The prosecutors went to Nixon, wo had his own troubles ( something something Wate-something ) at the time, and he decided to cut Agnew loose. Agnew went into court and pled guitly and got no jail time on return for resigning.
Maddow talked to the front-line prosecutors who started the case and saw it through at the time.
I assume there has been plenty of attempts that were thwarted by the Secret Service or the FBI or even some James Bond type character, and the news subsequently suppressed.
No one needs to know it might be relatively easy to take a pot-shot at a president.