Front Burner - America's history of assassinations and political violence

Episode Date: July 16, 2024

At this point, it's still unclear what motivated Thomas Matthew Crooks to climb a nearby roof with an AR-15-style rifle and attempt to shoot former U.S. president Donald Trump. But he is far from the first person to make an attempt on the life of an American president. From the high-profile assassinations of Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy to attempted assassinations of Ronald Reagan and Theodore Roosevelt, acts of politically motivated murder — whether successful or otherwise — are often major turning points in the nation's history.Centre College associate professor Jonathon L. Earle walks us through the legacy of political violence in the United States, and what that history could teach us about what could happen next.For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson. Since its inception, political violence has been an inextricable part of America's history. Assassinations and assassination attempts are a very large part of that. Of course, there is the assassination of Abraham Lincoln or the era of assassination,

which saw leaders like the Kennedy brothers, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, killed within a five-year period. Attempts on Ronald Reagan, on Gerald Ford. President Kennedy has been assassinated. It's official now. The president is dead. There has been an assassination attempt on President Reagan.

The president has been hit. His condition, according to the White House, is stable. Some very sad news for all of you, and I think sad news for all of our fellow citizens, and that is that Martin Luther King was shot and was killed tonight in Memphis. So today we're going to look at some of the history of assassinations in the United States. What has motivated assassins there? What happens afterwards? What parallels or historical lessons might we draw from in the wake of the assassination attempt on former U.S. President Trump? And we're going to do that with Jonathan Earl. might we draw from in the wake of the assassination attempt on former U.S. President Trump.

And we're going to do that with Jonathan Earl. Jonathan is a history professor at Center College in Kentucky, where he actually teaches a course on the history of political violence and assassination. Jonathan, thank you so much for coming out to FrontBurner today. It's really such a pleasure to have you. I'm glad to be here. So I wanted to start by asking about something that you wrote this week on Twitter, on X. And you wrote that death in politics has long been a possibility in American public life. And just flesh that out for me. What did you mean by that?

Well, the assassination attempt on President Trump this past weekend was as harrowing as it surely was inexcusable. It's not an aberration in American politics. A little over 40% of all American presidents, no fewer than 19, have been targeted by assassins. Wow. And following the failed assassination of Andrew Jackson in 1835, the time between the shooting of Presidents Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump this past weekend is actually the longest period in American history where a bullet has not been directed toward a president. And that's a remarkable 43-year span. Why do you think that is? What do you think explains this

era of relative calm? That's a really good question. So on the one hand, the short answer is I don't think we have a really good explanation. The 1960s, of course, were a period of extensive political assassinations and public life in the United States, beginning in November of 1963 with the killing of John F. Kennedy, after Kennedy, Malcolm X, then to Reverend Dr. King, Bobby Kennedy in June of 1968, Fred Hempton in late 1969. And I think in American political discourse, the shift in the 1970s, the 1980s, and the 1990s was in many respects that political murder or assassinations are something that happened elsewhere, but they're not necessarily something that happens within the life of the United States. On the other hand, we do know that throughout the 1970s

into the 1990s, that there are ascertained plots to assassinate presidents and additional failed attempts. Ascertained plots against Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Presidents Barack Obama and President Donald Trump. Fortunately, in each of those incidents, the assassinations were shut down before they could be pushed forward. So I think the relative silence can sometimes be misleading because I think the failure of plots, quote unquote failure of plots, can seem to suggest that the possibility of assassination goes away. Andesville, the storming of the Capitol on January 6th, Dylann Roof's assault on a Black church in South Carolina.

The suspect is Dylann Storm Roof. This Snapchat video taken last night, shortly before the shooting, shows the suspect in the church basement, sitting at a table, part of a small prayer meeting. He'd been with them about an hour when he stood up and, according to witnesses, said something like, I have to do it. You are raping our women and taking over our country and you have to go. And then he opened fire. But assassination as a specific phenomenon, I wonder when dealing with assassination specifically, what kinds of issues have we seen compel American citizens to try to kill their own leaders?

rights, ideas about personal rights, human rights, economic rights, social rights, state rights, and national rights, in the belief that particular presidents were causing an obstruction of the political rights of the people. So when Leon Chogut, for example, assassinated William McKinley in 1901. He believed that McKinley was obstructing popular labor political rights. And one of the best way to address kind of the negative impacts of capitalism on American society would be by removing a president. John Wilkes Booth saw himself as removing a political tyrant and vindicating a secessionist self and its violent racial hierarchies. Charlie Guiteau believed that by murdering James Garfield, he was going to unify the Republican Party. And those types of incidents really ask us to stop and think about what are the types of inner historical arguments that assassins are

making to think about political murder as a real possibility in public life. But it's interesting, right? Because historically, and please correct me if I'm wrong here, they have these visions, but they don't succeed, right? Is it fair for me to say that those two examples that you just gave, that didn't come to fruition? I think that's absolutely right. And I think that's a consistent theme that we see in the history of assassinations, that assassins may be able to control the time and space

within which they pull the trigger, but at the end of the day, they have no control over the ultimate outcomes of their assassination. Very briefly, I think a global or kind of a larger example is more interesting, and that would be the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. When Gavrilo Princip pulled the trigger, he had in mind the unification of Slavic nationalists in Eastern Europe. Little could he have imagined that the pulling of that trigger would result in around 40 million casualties, the beginning of the end of numerous colonial empires, the repartition

of the Middle East, and the economic contexts for a Second World War. So I think you're right. There's a real disconnect between the vision of assassins, but what this actually brings about in ways that we really don't quite know. And I think that's also part of what makes the conversation with Trump really interesting, that very shortly after the failed assassination attempt on his life, political pundits and popular commentators were writing that this will secure the election in November. And there's really nothing the Democrats can do about that. But we know in the past, it also hasn't quite worked that way.

Theodore Roosevelt was shot within a 10 minute walk from where President Trump will speak at the GOP convention in the coming days. And even after being shot with a bullet in his chest and giving an address for 60 minutes, he was still unable to secure electoral victory in that election of 1912. So I think even when it comes to talking about the failed assassination on President Trump, it's not quite clear how this is going to play out. That is such an interesting historical example. I did not know about that. Much has been said since Saturday about what may or may not have been the motivations of this shooter. But, you know, one thing I wanted to ask you is, you know, in terms of reverberations, in terms of consequences

of what might come of the event itself, does it even matter what the motivations are? I think this is a very important point. And it's one that echoes back to the failed assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan in 1981. We don't know Thomas Crook's motivations, but let's just say they're not political at all. I think what the Reagan assassination attempt shows that, I mean, if any president had a bullet fired at him for nonpolitical motivations, it was Ronald Reagan. I mean, John Hinckley's motivation was to prove his love to Jodie Foster. But even then, it had

very real political outcomes for the next several decades surrounding the controversies of the Brady Bill, the regulation of gun reforms. Brady was wounded in the 1981 assassination attempt on President Reagan. Afterwards, he became a crusader, along with his wife, for gun control efforts. So I think this idea that if somehow, you know, it comes out that Thomas Crooks was motivated because he wanted to, you know, win the love of Taylor Swift or something like that, like, it doesn't matter. It's still going to play out in very real political ways. I want to talk a little bit more with you about, you know, what has historically happened in the aftermath of assassinations or assassination attempts. Which assassinations or attempted assassinations do you think have

left the greatest mark? I think in the post-war period, so after the Second World War, there can be little doubt that the assassination of John F. Kennedy has cast a shadow within which multiple political murders have been interpreted. And the way in which that assassination also animated American ideas about conspiratorial politics and the inability or the perceived inability to trust that the United States government is going to be honest with the American public about what actually happens in high profile assassinations. And in that case, where numerous conspiracy theories emerged following, of course, the Warren Commission, but also the release of the Zapruder film, which was basically a 27 second film released in silent

eight millimeter color motion picture. And that one half a minute long film has given birth to numerous conspiracy theories that are with us to this day. The grassy knoll theory, the umbrella man theory. He's hit again, the violent backward motion, totally consistent with 80 percent of the witnesses, which said the shot came from the grassy knoll in front and to the right. Contradicting the official story that the president died because of a lone gunman firing from behind. And I think what we're already beginning to see with the assassination attempt on President Trump is the emergence of conspiracy theories that the Secret Service was somehow complicit in the failed attempt, that the Biden Service was somehow complicit in the failed attempt,

that the Biden administration was somehow complicit in the failed attempt, and how those theories will continue to play out leading up to the election will be an important part of this conversation, I think. Yeah, yeah. It's incredible just how quickly those conspiracy theories started spreading. And I imagine the obvious answer there is that we're in such a different climate now in terms of our relationship with the media and the role that these social media platforms are playing and how quickly information proliferates. Like, you know, you're talking about that 26 seconds of film of the JFK assassination. You know, now we have hundreds of videos from all angles. And what do you think that means for all of the conspiratorial thinking that is proliferating around what happened on Saturday? Jamie, this is a really important point, because in the case of the Zapruder film,

even if we're looking at several conspiracy theories, we can trace them for the most part to a common genealogy. But as you've noted, in the age in which we live, there are hundreds already, if not thousands of videos, photographs that are circulating that require certain amounts of verification. And depending on one's political priority or partisan position, I think what this will mean is different communities, political communities are going to double down on different types of evidence in such a way that the evidence furthers the political divide in the country and doesn't really provide a common evidentiary basis to have a single conversation about what happened allegedly or in all actuality.

Right. Of course, we're so primed to distress the media and now we're dealing with things like deepfakes, et cetera. I mean, it's just, it's far more complex. episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a typo, 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To

listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Cops. Just to spend a little bit more time on the decade that saw the assassination of John F. Kennedy, we also saw the assassination of his brother Bobby and civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. And, you know, for years, people have made comparisons between our current era and the political turmoil and social upheaval that we saw in the 60s. This, of course, is a decade marked by anti-war protests, a brutal struggle for civil rights. Now, there are several things that one could talk about before such a large, concerned and enlightened audience. such a large, concerned, and enlightened audience. There are so many problems facing our nation and our world that one could just take off anywhere. But today I would like to talk mainly about the race problem,

since I'll have to rush right out and go to New York to talk about Vietnam tomorrow. And I've been talking about it a great deal this week and weeks before that. And so do you see comparisons there? One of the sure differences between the 1960s and the reality of political violence today or would-be assassination today is the historical proximity between the 1960s and the Second World War, the type of violence that had occurred within a few decades of that. And then even if we push that further back, thinking about the violent legacies and horrors of Jim Crow, American slavery, but also the disenfranchisement

of Native communities from historic lands in the expansion of federal claims within the United States. Today, I think for younger audiences in particular, there isn't a similar point of reference. There surely are large amounts of important debates and points being made about political violence in Gaza, in Sudan, and other areas throughout the world as well. But I do think the sheer context of the Second World War, one wonders if audiences in the 1960s had different ways of thinking about the expectations of violence in their politics in a way that maybe is different today. And I don't know. I think it's just an interesting question to think about. Yeah. Yeah. It's an interesting answer too.

We've talked about domestic assassination in the United States, but the U.S. is also a major source for exporting violence abroad as well. Dozens of assassinations across Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Latin America have been linked to U.S. foreign policy, even recently in Iran with the assassination of Soleimani. As president, my highest and most solemn duty is the defense of our nation and its citizens. is the defense of our nation and its citizens. Last night, at my direction, the United States military successfully executed a flawless precision strike

that killed the number one terrorist anywhere in the world, Qasem Soleimani. Soleimani was plotting... Why is it that Americans think differently? You think about assassinations for which their government is responsible versus assassinations carried out against politicians at home? If I may use the term, I think there is a certain political dissonance or disconnect between the way in which discourses about American exceptionalism play out in domestic politics. So, for example, when President Biden addressed the nation this past weekend, he was very quick to note on the one hand that assassinations, political violence more broadly, have no place in the American project.

He referred to the statement that we solve our differences at the ballot box. He referred to the statement that we solve our differences at the ballot box. But yet, on the other hand, when it comes to foreign policy, there has been a very long history, certainly during the Cold War, up until very recently, of organizing, orchestrating, and funding political murders around the world. funding political murders around the world. One of the areas that I thought about is the unmanned aerial systems or drones. Currently, the Department of Defense operates more than 11,000. So I think there are two different types of almost political categories that get used in American politics to think about what happens at home, that we're kind of a democratic, progressive societies, even though there is this long history of political assassination

in public life. But then drones being something that almost gets talked about to securitize the world in a post 9-11 landscape. And so it gets analyzed slightly differently than the likes of a Thomas Crooks taking a shot at the former president. On that note, on the attempt on the life of Donald Trump, I'm curious to hear the perspective of a historian. What do you think would have happened if Trump was actually assassinated, if the attempt was successful? So for a historian, we, of course, call these counterfactuals, that it becomes very difficult to speculate what would have happened had the president been assassinated. I think one of the points that will be interesting to look at is how Donald Trump will utilize this near fatality to legitimize his candidacy and the

way in which he will rewrite the survival narrative into his political campaign and political speech in the upcoming convention. And I think, though, the nearness of that political death, the nearness of the passing of a former president who's currently running, has also impacted the way the left is perhaps having to change its own discourse. I noticed this morning, as you probably did, that MSNBC changed its programming this morning, seemingly worried that their hosts during the morning show, the morning show, would be unable to navigate with sensitivity the assassination attempt on the former president's life. And I think for me, that also is an important part of the conversation that I think that in public discourse right now in the United States, that public political violence is

often associated with the right. So there are lots of references that point to the inflammatory language of President Trump. There are lots of conversations about January the 6th. Not so much conversation about, well, what are the ways in which discourse on the left might be animating different types of political violence as well. I noticed that shortly after the assassination attempt on President Trump's life unfolded that numerous right commentators and political organizers made a quick reference to the speech that President Biden gave the day before President Trump. Most importantly, and I mean this from the bottom of my heart, Trump is a threat to this nation.

The United States Supreme Court said there's virtually no limit on the power of the president. Trump said if he wins, he'll be a dictator on day one. He means it, folks. And the correlation or the connection that the pundits were making,

they were putting it as a question, is it any coincidence that after following that sort of language, that it would translate into an assassination attempt on a president who all too often has been referred to as an authoritarian, a dictator, an Adolf Hitler, a very inflammatory type of historical language. So I think wrestling through the way that discourses of violence work on the left has been, I think, a mostly silent part of this conversation. And I now wonder to what extent the pendulum might swing back a little bit more toward the middle. little bit more toward the middle. Yeah. I mean, so I've had this, I've asked this question of some people since the attack on Saturday. And you know what you, the response that you hear is that, well, the problem is that the Democrats are, they believe that he is the greatest threat

to democracy that the country has ever seen. And so I just, how would you respond to that? So a historian's perspective on this is that the past is not often, as is noted, a prologue. It is more often the case that I think the past is perspectival. And I think the Democrats and left-leaning public intellectuals have tended to operate in a space where claims about the past, claims about American democracy, claims about the Trump presidency are seen as matter-of-fact and unquestionable claims on political reality in the United States. Whereas what the Republicans or kind of more far right-leaning groups in the United States are off doing is kind of the work of the figment of imagination. It's conspiratorial. It's not grounded in reality. version of the past and whose version of political perspective is going to win out?

And what are the ways in which the election cycle are going to begin to help to solidify particular historical interpretations of the past and the way that those are being used to animate contemporary politics? I think that's actually a really great place for us to end today. Jonathan, this was really interesting. I want to thank you so much for coming by. I really appreciate it. My pleasure. Thank you for having me.

All right. That is all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening and we'll talk to you tomorrow. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.