Photo courtesy of Trump White House Archives
It’s such an unlikely story: how Donald J. Trump, the good-looking young billionaire who hinted at a possible presidential run in 1987 on the Phil Donahue show, wound up winning the presidency as a Republican in 2016. Now, as the “King of the Deal” and master of the comeback, he is being sworn in as the 47th president of the United States in one of the most improbable comebacks in history. It’s fascinating to reflect on the many firsts he has achieved and just how unusual both he and his presidency have been.
President Trump is the first president in U.S. history to assume office without having previously held a public office or a government job. He joins an exclusive group of leaders who were elected without prior elected office experience. The others include Zachary Taylor (12th president, 1849–1850), a career military officer; Ulysses S. Grant (18th president, 1869–1877), the commanding general of the Union Army during the Civil War; Herbert Hoover (31st president, 1929–1933), Secretary of Commerce; and Dwight D. Eisenhower (34th president, 1953–1961), the Supreme Allied Commander during World War II.
He is only the second man in U.S. history to be elected to non-consecutive terms as president. The first was Grover Cleveland, who served as both the 22nd president (1885–1889) and the 24th president (1893–1897). Like Cleveland, Trump’s return to the presidency marks a historic and rare political achievement, underscoring his enduring influence in American politics.
Donald Trump is one of only four presidential candidates in U.S. history to have survived an assassination attempt, and he is the only one to have been targeted multiple times. The FBI identified two assassination attempts and two additional plots against Trump, spanning both his 2016 and 2024 campaigns.
The first known attempt occurred on June 18, 2016, during a campaign rally in Las Vegas, Nevada. Michael Steven Sandford, a 20-year-old British national, attempted to seize a police officer’s firearm with the intent to assassinate Trump. Sandford had practiced shooting at a gun range the day before, despite having no prior firearms experience. He was swiftly apprehended by law enforcement, and no injuries occurred.
Trump faced another assassination attempt on July 13, 2024, during a campaign rally near Butler, Pennsylvania. Thomas Matthew Crooks fired eight rounds with an AR-15-style rifle, grazing Trump’s right ear. Tragically, the attack resulted in the death of one audience member and injuries to two others before the Secret Service neutralized the assailant. Trump received treatment for his superficial wound and resumed his campaign activities shortly afterward.
Later that same year, on September 15, 2024, Ryan Wesley Routh, armed with an AK-47-style rifle, attempted to target Trump at the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida. A Secret Service agent spotted Routh’s rifle barrel protruding through a fence and opened fire, prompting the attacker to flee. Routh was apprehended without any harm to Trump. Additionally, on August 6, 2024, the FBI foiled a plot involving Asif Merchant, a Pakistani national allegedly connected to Iran, who was accused of planning to assassinate Trump. The plot was disrupted before it could be carried out.
Trump joins a short list of other presidential candidates who have faced assassination attempts. Theodore Roosevelt, while campaigning in 1912, survived being shot in the chest by John Schrank, delivering a 90-minute speech with a bullet lodged in his body before seeking medical attention. Robert F. Kennedy, campaigning in 1968, was shot by Sirhan Sirhan in Los Angeles; though initially surviving the attack, he succumbed to his injuries the following day. George Wallace, in 1972, was shot five times by Arthur Bremer while campaigning in Maryland, leaving him paralyzed for the remainder of his life.
Trump’s resilience in surviving multiple assassination attempts adds another layer to his already historic and unconventional political career, underscoring the risks faced by modern political figures.
Donald Trump’s presidency was marked by several unprecedented diplomatic and policy achievements that set him apart from his predecessors. He was the first sitting U.S. president to meet with a North Korean leader, holding three historic summits with Kim Jong Un. The meetings began in Singapore in June 2018, followed by Hanoi in 2019, and concluded with an extraordinary moment in June 2019 when Trump became the first sitting president to step foot in North Korea, crossing the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea.
In the Middle East, Trump broke decades of diplomatic convention by officially recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in December 2017, followed by the relocation of the U.S. Embassy there in May 2018. Additionally, he brokered the groundbreaking Abraham Accords, which facilitated normalization agreements between Israel and several Arab nations, including the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco—marking the first such agreements in decades and reshaping regional diplomacy.
On the global stage, Trump confronted China head-on, launching the first major trade war aimed at addressing trade imbalances and intellectual property theft. Domestically, his administration oversaw a significant energy milestone, making the U.S. a net exporter of oil and natural gas for the first time in decades.
Trump also redefined presidential communication, earning the moniker of the “Twitter President.” He utilized the platform as a primary means of announcing policies, criticizing opponents, and directly engaging with the public, setting a precedent for modern political communication.
During both, his first term and his 2024 campaign, Trump has expressed interest in bold territorial ambitions, including renaming the Gulf of Mexico, recovering the Panama Canal, and buying Greenland. The last president to increase the territorial size of the United States was Dwight D. Eisenhower, who, in 1959, oversaw the formal addition of Alaska and Hawaii as states, significantly expanding the nation’s territory.
This brings us back to Trump’s origins. He is the only president who was first a world-class real estate magnate, living in a New York City skyscraper that bears his name—Trump Tower. And if his ambitions succeed, he may yet become the first president to truly Make America Great Again.
The post The Author of America First: Trump’s Presidential Firsts appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.