Correspondents' Dinner Shooting Revives Memories of Another Presidential Assassination Attempt—at the Same Hotel
A recent alleged assassination attempt at the White House Correspondents' Dinner at the Washington Hilton has drawn parallels to the 1981 shooting of President Ronald Reagan, which occurred at the same hotel. In 1981, John Hinckley Jr. shot Reagan and three others, wounding the president with a bullet that pierced his lung. Though Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity and later released, the recurrence of violence at the venue has reignited scrutiny over its security. Both Hinckley and Tim McCarthy, a Secret Service agent injured in the 1981 attack, have publicly commented on the latest incident.
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Forty-five years before the alleged assassination attempt against President Donald Trump at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner on Saturday night, a different President was shot at the same Washington, D.C., hotel.Then-President Ronald Reagan was outside the Washington Hilton, the venue where the WHCA dinner is held each year, in 1981 when a man named John Hinckley Jr. made an attempt on his life. While the suspect in Saturday’s shooting was apprehended before reaching the main ballroom where Trump, members of his Cabinet, and more than 2,000 other guests were seated, Hinckley got far closer to Reagan in his attack, firing a revolver at the President from just feet away and wounding him before he was ultimately subdued and arrested.Hinckley, now 70, said that it was…
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