A HIGH-ranking US official who was in the White House when Ronald Reagan was shot says Trump’s reaction outshone even the legendary president’s.
Jim C. Miller was leaving a meeting in a room across the hallway from the Oval Office in March, 1981 when he heard the news about the attempt on Reagan’s life.
The assassination attempt against Reagan was the last time a president was nearly killed, until Trump was shot on Saturday.
President Reagan was blasted by John Hinckley Jr as he left a hotel and returned to the presidential limo in Washington DC.
A bullet bounced off the limo and hit the former movie star under the left arm, breaking a rib, puncturing a lung, and causing serious internal injuries.
Gunman Hinckley was obsessed with actress Jodie Foster and bizarrely hoped assassinating Dutch would get the 19-year-old’s attention.
Miller, an economist, was the assistant director of the Office of Management and Budget at the time and worked in the president’s residence.
He said: “I was in the Roosevelt room when this happened, as I was leaving a meeting and somebody stepped out of the press off and said ‘the president has been shot!'”
The now 82-year-old spoke to The Sun from Virginia and said he thinks Trump has been defiant in his reaction to the attempted assassination.
He said: “I think Reagan was a little bit more introspective than before, he realised that he didn’t have infinite time to accomplish his goals.
“He walked into the hospital and said: ‘I hope you’re all Republicans’…. He told the first lady ‘honey, I forgot to duck’.
“I think in Trump’s case it will make him more fully resolved in making America great again.
“I think it will make him even more determined… I think he has his mind made up about what he wants to accomplish and how he wants to accomplish it.
“He’s [Trump] the kind of person that says ‘I am not going to let this take me down, I am not going to let somebody [stop me] in my quest to Make America Great Again’.”
Miller backs Trump to bounce back from the shooting and take the election in November.
“It looks like he’s [Trump] going to win, especially with that extraordinary debacle President Biden had in the debate.
“It cemented in many people’s minds what they suspected all along from his behaviour, that he’s really not up to being president again, certainly not for another four years.”
Reagan would go on to take the 1984 election in a 49 state romp, smashing Walter Mondale by 18 points in the national vote.
But Miller said the political fallout from the assassination “might swing either way” and may depend on the the shooter’s motive.
He said: “I think there will be some sympathy support, a little support there.
“I think part of the effects will be to what extent some of the Biden agency heads are found having been not very good with their law enforcement.
“There will be some people who think maybe Biden’s administration didn’t offer as robust Secret Service protection as they might have.
“There might be some of that which could boost Trump and diminish Biden’s support.”
But he said if Trump unjustly blamed the Democrats for the shooting, it could work against him.
“I think he would be foolish to engage in retribution… He would pay a big price for it.
“Some people are going to go out there and blame the Democrats for this person, you’ve got to keep in this mind that there are people who are crazy.
“Look at the person who shot president Reagan, he was in love with a movie star, how unrealistic can you get with something like that.”
Miller said there was a sense at the time that the failed assassination on Reagan was a sad event, as it could have cut short what he wanted to achieve.
He didn’t see Reagan again until he returned from hospital almost two weeks later with his arm in a sling.
The president would go 49 days before he left Washington DC and did not hold a press conference for another 30.
His approval rating shot up to nearly 70 per cent in that time.
Hinckley shot then-president Reagan in 1981 outside a hotel in Washington DC.
Dutch, as he was known, had been to speak in the Washington Hilton to union representatives.
The hotel was considered the safest in DC as it had been regularly inspected by the Secret Service and had an enclosed passageway call the ‘President’s Walk’ which was built after the assassination of JFK.
Shooter John Hinckley Jr was waiting for Reagan to leave the hotel standing with the public.
But Reagan walked right past Hinckley, who then crouched and blasted the hand gun six times in two seconds.
He missed the president with every shot, but the fifth shot bounced off the limousine and hit Reagan.
Hinckley also wounded Secret Service agent Timothy McCarthy, police officer Thomas Delahanty and then-White House Press Secretary James Brady, who remained paralyzed for the rest of his life.
During his trial in 1982, Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity.
He was confined to a mental hospital in Washington for the next three decades.
Nine days earlier Reagan had been at Ford’s Theatre in DC where Abraham Lincoln had been shot and killed over 100 years before.
