Trump channeled Ronald Reagan after assassination attempt, pollster who worked for 40th president says: ‘Dignified poise and determination’
Donald Trump’s courageous response to the assassination attempt on him is reminiscent of how former President Ronald Reagan deftly responded after getting shot — and Americans will admire Trump for it, one of his pollsters predicts.
“I compare President Trump to President Ronald Reagan. You get historic respect for this. This is a historic moment in a historic campaign,” Trump campaign pollster John McLaughlin told The Post.
President Reagan, then 70, was shot March 30, 1981, by deranged gunman John Hinckley — a little more than two months into his first-term.
Showing grace under pressure, the former actor cracked jokes to show the country that he was OK.
“Honey, I forgot to duck,” Reagan reportedly told First Lady Nancy Reagan when she first saw him at the hospital.
Reagan, famously known as “The Gipper” for playing a gravely ill football player in the “Knute Rockne All American” film, even joked with the doctors who operated on him.
“Please tell me you’re all Republicans,” Reagan said.
He won enormous empathy and support from Americans over the shooting and his remarkable attitude afterward.
McLaughlin, who was a 25-year-old Reagan volunteer at the time, called the shooting of the 78-year-old Trump, “a bad flashback.
“You can’t take anything for granted,” the pollster said grimly.
The fact that Reagan recovered healthwise — and politically — wasn’t lost on McLaughlin, either.
“Reagan was shot. He survived and did well. He won re-election in a landslide,” he said.
Likewise, a bloodied Trump’s feisty response of pumping his fist in the air and telling supporters to “fight, fight” after getting shot while being whisked off the campaign rally stage by Secret Service agents will have a similar, lasting impact, the pollster said.
Independent presidential candidate Robert Kennedy Jr. — whose dad and uncle were assassinated in the 1960s — praised Trump’s “inspirational” response.
The harrowing and potentially tragic moment involving Trump encapsulated him, McLaughlin said.
“He’s determined. There was a dignified poise and determination,” he said. “That was his instant reaction. He loves the people who attend his rallies. It’s about more than him.”
Trump will never give up or give in to his detractors — and it showed in that one moment, McLaughlin said.
He likened Trump to former South African President and anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela.
“Everything they’ve thrown at him — the impeachments, the indictments and now someone tried to kill him — a lot of other people would have folded,” McLaughlin said.
“Like with Reagan, there’s a relief that he’s OK — and it re-energizes the mission. We go on from here.”
New York State Republican Party Chairman Ed Cox said Trump’s grace under pressure will electrify Republicans at the party’s nominating convention this week in Milwaukee, Wisc. — and impress open-minded Americans.
“Americans saw what Donald Trump was made of. It’s going to energize us,” Cox, the son-in-law of the late President Richard Nixon, said Saturday night after the shooting of Trump by young sniper Thomas Matthew Crooks at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania.
Cox said the assassination atempt reminded him of when former President Theodore Roosevelt, a native New Yorker, was shot in the chest while giving a speech in 1912 in Milwaukee. He survived.
“It takes more than that to kill a bull moose,” said Roosevelt, an avid hunter and outdoorsman, afterward.
“Trump showed the toughness people like. You can only admire that. You can see him saying after getting shot, “Fight, fight. Keep fighting,’ ” Cox said.
Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016 to become the 45th president but lost his re-election to President Biden, 81, in 2020. He’s mounting a comeback against Biden to reclaim the White House.
