The New York Times‘ Luke Broadwater (4/26/26) wrongly wrote that Donald Trump was “the first current or former US president to face an assassination attempt since 1981.”

Following the shooting incident at the White House Correspondents Dinner, the New York Times (4/26/26) wrote:

On July 13, 2024, Mr. Trump became the first current or former US president to face an assassination attempt since 1981, when a bullet nicked his ear while he was giving a speech in Butler.

That is absurdly wrong; there have been numerous efforts to kill current or former US presidents since 1981, many of which were covered in real time by the New York Times.

In 1993, there was allegedly a plot to kill former President George Bush—the first one—on a visit to Kuwait. “Clinton Administration officials said tonight that they now believe that Iraqi saboteurs sought to assassinate George Bush during the former president’s visit to Kuwait,” the Times (5/8/93) reported. “The Kuwaitis said they had seized two cars loaded with remote-controlled explosives that were intended to kill Mr. Bush and his entourage.” There are questions about whether this plot was invented by the Kuwaiti government (Ne****w York Times,  10/25/93), but the Clinton administration took it seriously enough to bomb Iraq in retaliation for it (New York Times, 6/28/93).

The 1994 attack on the White House is one of numerous assassination attempts that have gone down the New York Times‘ memory hole.

A year later, the Times (10/30/94) reported that “a 26-year-old Colorado man carrying a Chinese-made semi-automatic rifle sprayed the north face of the White House with a score or more of bullets.” President Bill Clinton was inside at the time, but was unharmed. The gunman, Francisco Martin Duran, was later convicted of attempted assassination (New York Times, 6/30/95).

In 2005, Vladimir Arutyunian threw a live grenade at George W. Bush during a speech Bush was giving in the former Soviet republic of Georgia (New York Times, 7/22/05). The grenade reportedly didn’t go off because the firing pin had been wrapped too tightly in a handkerchief (FBI, 1/11/06).

Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez shot up the White House with a semi-automatic rifle in 2011. The Times (11/17/11) reported:

Federal authorities on Thursday charged a 21-year-old Idaho man with attempting to assassinate President Obama—saying he had told one friend that the president was “the Antichrist” and that he “needed to kill him.”

After Obama left office, he was repeatedly sent letters laced with the nerve toxin ricin (NPR, 5/20/14; CNN, 7/16/14).

These are among the more prominent presidential assassination attempts since 1981; many others were stopped by law enforcement before they got so far.

This is not mere history trivia; by erasing the long record of attempted violence against US presidents, the New York Times plays into Donald Trump’s martyr complex, and makes it more likely that the government will take draconian action against a problem that the United States has lived with for decades.

ACTION: Please tell the New York Times to correct its false report about the uncommonness of presidential assassination attempts.

CONTACT: corrections@nytimes.com

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