On March 30, 1981, President Ronald Reagan — just two months into his first term — was shot and wounded by John Hinckley Jr. in Washington, D.C. He was the last president or former president to be injured by a would-be assassin until Donald Trump's ear was grazed by a bullet at a Pennsylvania rally Saturday night.
Reagan was leaving the Washington Hilton after a speaking engagement and Hinckley, who would later be found not guilty by reason of insanity, fired six shots at him. The sixth round ricocheted off the side of the presidential limousine and struck Reagan under his left arm, breaking a rib, puncturing a lung, and causing serious internal bleeding.
By the time he arrived at George Washington University Hospital, Reagan was close to death. But the emergency room doctors stabilized him and successfully operated to remove the bullet that had lodged less than an inch from his heart.
 Secret Service agents pushed President Reagan into his car within seconds of his being shot in an attempted assassination. A bullet had pierced Reagan's lung and stopped less than an inch from his heart. |
The president remained in the hospital for 12 days; he was released on April 11. That day, he wrote the following belated entry in his private diary (some abbreviations have been spelled out for clarity):
Monday, March 30, 1981
My day to address the Building & Construction Trades Natl. Conference AFL-CIO at the Hilton Ballroom — 2pm. Was all dressed to go & for some reason at the last minute took off my really good wrist watch & wore an older one.
Speech not riotously received — still it was successful.
Left the hotel at the usual side entrance and headed for the car — suddenly there was a burst of gun fire from the left. Secret Service agent pushed me onto the floor of the car & jumped on top. I felt a blow in my upper back that was unbelievably painful. I was sure he'd broken my rib. The car took off. I sat up on the edge of the seat almost paralyzed by pain. Then I began coughing up blood which made both of us think — yes, I had a broken rib & it had punctured a lung. He switched orders from White House to George Washington U. Hospital.
By the time we arrived I was having great trouble getting enough air. We did not know that Tim McCarthy (Secret Service) had been shot in the chest, Jim Brady in the head & a policeman, Tom Delahanty, in the neck.
I walked into the emergency room and was hoisted onto a cart where I was stripped of my clothes. It was then we learned I'd been shot & had a bullet in my lung.
Getting shot hurts. Still my fear was growing because no matter how hard I tried to breathe it seemed I was getting less & less air. I focused on that tiled ceiling and prayed. But I realized I couldn't ask for God's help while at the same time I felt hatred for the mixed-up young man who had shot me. Isn't that the meaning of the lost sheep? We are all God's children & therefore equally beloved by him. I began to pray for his soul and that he would find his way back to the fold.
I opened my eyes once to find Nancy there. I pray I'll never face a day when she isn't there. Of all the ways God has blessed me giving her to me is the greatest and beyond anything I can ever hope to deserve.
All the kids arrived and the hours ran together in a blur during which I was operated on. I know it's going to be a long recovery but there has been such an outpouring of love from all over.
The days of therapy, transfusion, intravenous, etc. have gone by — now it is Sat. April 11 and this morning I left the hospital and am here at the White House with Nancy & Patti. The treatment, the warmth, the skill of those at G.W. has been magnificent but it's great to be here at home.
Whatever happens now I owe my life to God and will try to serve him in every way I can.
It is one more measure of Reagan's decency, humility, and religious sincerity that even in his personal journal — which at the time was confidential — his reaction to a near-fatal injury was to pray for the "mixed-up young man" who had tried to kill him and to express gratitude for the love of his wife and the skill of his doctors. Rarely has America elected a president of such extraordinary character.
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The detail Senator Warren left out
To my surprise, a comment I posted on X last week went viral.
For social media users with millions of followers, pretty much any post is guaranteed to be seen tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of times. But for mere mortals like me, only infrequently does a tweet blow up so spectacularly. Sometimes I'll think I've crafted a deft remark, perfectly timed — and it will get scarcely any pickup at all. But on Thursday morning the opposite happened. Spotting a comment about taxes by Senator Elizabeth Warren, I responded with a quick factual point. Within moments, my response had taken off. By Friday morning it had been viewed 1.1 million times and "liked" or reposted by almost 16,000 users.
Plainly my "quick factual point" had struck a nerve. So maybe the subject deserves more than just a sentence on social media.
The Internal Revenue Service announced Thursday that it had collected $1 billion owed by wealthy tax evaders. The Associated Press reported on the IRS announcement and The Boston Globe published the AP story. Then the Globe posted a link to the story on X: "IRS collects milestone $1 billion in back taxes from high-wealth taxpayers," it said. Warren in turn forwarded the Globe's tweet, giving the news a predictably belligerent, partisan spin:
Democrats boosted IRS funding, and it's already gotten back $1 BILLION from millionaire tax cheats. Republicans want to cut IRS funding again to protect their rich tax-dodging buddies — no way.
When I saw Warren's words, I read the Globe/AP story. To my mind, its most significant detail was in the story's last paragraph: Despite the flashy headline about $1 billion recovered from rich tax cheats, the overwhelming majority of IRS audits last year targeted taxpayers earning less than $200,000. So I highlighted that point in a comment on Warren's tweet:
Buried deep in the same story: Two-thirds of IRS audits initiated last year were on taxpayers making less than $200,000.
Warren had lobbed a partisan attack, praising Democrats for a huge increase in IRS funding — part of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 — and accusing Republicans of protecting tax crooks. But she left out a crucial detail. Giving the IRS billions of additional dollars to hire legions of new auditors did not lead to a roundup of ultra-rich tax cheats. It led to a crackdown against even more middle-class taxpayers.
Which was precisely what the Biden administration and Democrats like Warren had insisted would not happen.
During the debate over the 2022 legislation, the White House and its allies repeated again and again that the IRS would not use its beefed-up enforcement resources to go after Americans who earn less than $400,000 per year.
At a briefing shortly before the bill was signed, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre maintained that government auditors would not pursue anyone making less than that amount. "It will only apply to those earning over $400,000," she stressed. "This is not about folks who make less than $400,000."
Similar assurance came from Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen: "Small business or households earning $400,000 per year or less will not see an increase in the chances that they are audited, contrary to the misinformation from opponents of this legislation" she wrote. Warren, Ed Markey, and other Democratic senators signed an open letter underscoring the point. The lavish new funding for the IRS, they emphasized, was aimed at "increasing enforcement for high-income individuals."
But those promises were for public consumption only. There was no such stipulation in the legislation itself. Indeed, when Republicans offered a floor amendment to explicitly bar new audits from targeting $400,000-and-under households, Democrats unanimously voted it down. They knew all along that the primary targets of the expanded IRS would be middle-class households.
Because that's where the money is.
Americans with incomes above $400,000 account for less than 2 percent of taxpayers, and they can afford top-shelf lawyers and accountants to defend themselves against IRS audits and litigation. By contrast, the overwhelming majority of income is earned by Americans far lower on the income ladder. It is on them that IRS enforcement will always be concentrated, no matter how often Democrats like Warren claim otherwise.
While the Massachusetts senator accuses Republicans of caring only about "their rich tax-dodging buddies," the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration — an official Treasury Department watchdog — sets the record straight: In 2023, 63 percent of audits initiated by the IRS targeted taxpayers with incomes of less than $200,000. It is no surprise that Warren didn't want to call attention to that detail. Happily, social media helped me do so instead.
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What I Wrote Then
25 years ago on the Op-Ed Page
From "Weld's vanishing legacy," July 15, 1999:
Was it only a few short years ago that William Weld cast the longest shadow on Beacon Hill?
All politicians lose clout once they leave office. What is surprising about Weld is how little it seems to matter that he ever was in office.
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The Last Line
"I have paid the required tribute, in obedience to the law, making use of such fitting words as I had. The tribute of deeds has been paid in part; for the dead have them in deeds, and it remains only that their children should be maintained at the public charge until they are grown up: this is the solid prize with which, as with a garland, Athens crowns her sons living and dead, after a struggle like theirs. For where the rewards of virtue are greatest, there the noblest citizens are enlisted in the service of the state. And now, when you have duly lamented, every one his own dead, you may depart." — Pericles, Funeral Oration (431 BCE)
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(Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe).
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