TOWN OF MANLIUS – Larry Cook, a presidential historian originally from Manlius, spoke with the Eagle Bulletin last week about the recent assassination attempt on former United States President Donald Trump.
Coincidentally, it was only last August that Cook gave a presentation at the Fayetteville Free Library about assassinations of American presidents and foiled attempts on the lives of others.
Then, when the news came Saturday, July 13 of Trump being grazed with a bullet at his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, Cook happened to be fresh off formulating and promoting a program for another library speaking engagement just two days later that would be focusing on the Secret Service’s role in shielding the president.
By the time Cook was giving his talk on Monday the room was packed and in need of extra chairs for attendees.
In the country’s history, apart from the four presidents who have been assassinated, there were also nonfatal attempts on Andrew Jackson in 1835, Theodore Roosevelt in 1912, Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1933, Harry Truman in 1950, Gerald Ford twice in 1975, and Ronald Reagan in 1981 prior to this month’s shooting that Trump narrowly survived as Cook explained, pointing out that 43 years had passed between the last two on the list—though he said “one attempt is one too many.”
Cook said just about all or at least most presidents have had murderous threats made against them in some form either through letters, over the phone, on social media outlets, or verbally face to face, but it takes it to the next level, he said, when somebody actually makes the effort to go through with a significant, direct attempt to cause bodily harm.
In Cook’s view, the serious attempt that compares most to the one on Trump occurred when an assailant fired at Teddy Roosevelt, then also a former president actively campaigning to return to the White House.
Running on the Bull Mouse Party ticket at the time, Roosevelt was similarly in the middle of addressing an audience of supporters, though in that instance, the bullet entered his chest and was buffered by the lengthy, folded-up speech and steel glasses case in his jacket pocket. That was in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the same place Trump was heading for the Republican National Convention in the wake of his campaign event shooting this election year.
Against the advice of those around him, Roosevelt insisted on continuing with his scheduled speech as a blood pattern grew on his shirt, Cook said. That willingness to go on was perhaps echoed, albeit to a different degree, when Trump stood up to engage with the crowd after the bullet caught his right ear by repeating the word “fight” and triumphantly raising his fist just before being rushed off the stage.
Born in 1960, Cook’s earliest childhood memory, and what chiefly influenced him to be interested in presidents from then on, was the assassination of JFK in 1963.
He was a teenager when, about a year into his presidency, Gerald Ford was targeted by two different female shooters merely a couple of weeks apart in September 1975, one of them the Charles Manson follower Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme. Ford left those scenes unwounded since one gun didn’t have a round in the chamber, while the second attempt was thwarted by a United States marine who threw off the aim.
A few years later, when the then newly in office Ronald Reagan was shot and wounded more seriously than initially thought, the air of the country and the public reaction was similar to what it is now after Trump’s assassination attempt, in that there was shock and abhorrence no matter what side of the political aisle people found themselves on, Cook recalls. Three others were struck in that shooting, including press secretary James Brady, who was permanently rendered partially paralyzed as a result.
Compared to those assassination attempts on sitting presidents in his lifetime and the others that came before, Cook said the prevalence of the internet and texting, the ability of phones to capture incidents from various angles, and the constant churning of the 24-hour news cycle allowed word of what happened at Trump’s rally to travel all over the world much faster.
Cook said the pictures from the Trump shooting will go down in history and people will remember what they were doing and where they were when they heard about it. In his case, the presidential historian and memorabilia collector who lives in Wilkes-Barre, a little over four hours away from Butler, was sitting around the kitchen table having pizza with family when all of a sudden his phone started going off with a flurry of texts, incoming calls and news alerts. At that point, he and everyone around him stayed glued to the television coverage.
“In my opinion, when we have an attack on one of our leaders or a former leader like in this case, it’s really an attack on all of us,” he said. “It’s an attack on America and it’s an attack on our freedom and our democracy.”
Cook, a life member of the Manlius Fire Department and its former director of medical operations, went on to say that we should keep thoughts and prayers with the innocent victims not at the podium who were caught in the crossfire that day, including the former Buffalo volunteer firefighter who lost his life, Corey Comperatore.
With mounting scrutiny facing the Secret Service post-shooting, Cook said he will always give that agency credit because of the difficult job its men and women are tasked with as protectors of the president at all times. Cook himself has had numerous interactions with Secret Service agents over the years as a longtime friend of former President Jimmy Carter.
“They train their whole career for something that they hope will never happen and usually doesn’t happen, but when it does, they react immediately and step into harm’s way, so I have a lot of respect for what they do,” he said. “There are questions about security at the rally and how the perpetrator managed to get on the roof of that building, but we’ll see how investigations play out, and I hope it’ll be figured out how to correct such things going forward.”
Cook is the author of the books “Symbols of Patriotism: First Ladies and Daughters of the American Revolution” and “Presidential Coincidences, Amazing Facts and Collectibles.”
