On Presidential Assassins and the RNC With Rick Perlstein

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Ronald Reagan carried a gun in his briefcase when he was president. According to Edmund Morris’ pseudo-historical memoir of Reagan, Dutch, Reagan got the gun in Iowa. “It is a fact … that RR did acquire a 1934 Walther PPK .380 pocket-sized police pistol early in his stay in Des Moines and kept it lovingly the rest of his life,” Morris wrote. “He even toted it in his briefcase as president.”

Reagan was obsessed with the idea that he was a target of assassination and had been since his days as the president of the Screen Actors Guild in the 1940s.

That’s just one of the bits of ephemera from this episode of Angry Planet where we’re joined by historian Rick Perlstein who is on the ground at the Republican National Convention. On Saturday, a gunman took a shot at former President Donald Trump. He missed, clipping his ear.

What can the lives of past assassins, both failed and successful tell us about Thomas Matthew Crooks? What is the duty of the historian at this moment? Is political violence on the rise in America or is this all business as usual?

Join us as we ask these questions and attempt to find some answers.

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