Trump assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, has chilling ties to George Washington, first president

An important figure in American history once narrowly escaped with his life after an assassination attempt in western Pennsylvania – but it wasn’t former President Donald J. Trump.

George Washington, just 21 years old when it happened, was a major in the British Army.

The year was 1753. 

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The United States did not yet exist — and young Washington was traveling from Virginia to western Pennsylvania.

His goal? Preventing war. 

Washington “was on his way to go up to Fort Le Boeuf, which would be close to Erie,” Jack Cohen, president of Butler County Tourism and board member of the 1753 George Washington Trail, told Fox News Digital in a phone interview this week.

There, he would meet with French troops “to see if he could stop the French and Indian War,” Cohen said. 

Washington had been tasked with delivering a letter from Virginia Gov. Robert Dinwiddie, requesting that the French leave the area. 

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But the French balked at the thought of leaving the area — and a full-blown war would begin about six months after Washington visited Fort Le Boeuf. 

Yet even before that, on Dec. 27, 1753, Washington and his guide, a surveyor named Christopher Gist, were following the Venango Indian Trail on their way back to Virginia when they stopped for the night at Connoquenessing Creek in Pennsylvania, Cohen relayed. 

There, the two befriended an “Indian guide” who said he would help them through the wilderness, he said.

As it turns out, the “Indian guide” was allied with the French troops — and was not pleased to see Washington.

The man “loaded his musket and shot at Washington and just missed him.”

The man “loaded his musket and shot at Washington and just missed him,” Cohen said of the chilling murder attempt. 

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“They were going to chase him down and Gist said, ‘Let him go.’ And so they let him go, and they went on their way the next morning.” 

Nearly 300 years after the brazen attempt on Washington’s life, the event is chronicled by two markers in what is now Evans City, Pennsylvania – which is close to the Butler Farm Show location where Trump almost lost his life recently. 

Washington’s would-be assassin, the markers note, was “less than 15 paces from him” when the gunman fired the shot. 

Today, Cohen and the other board members are trying to get Washington’s historic route recognized by the National Parks Service as a National Historic Trail. 

“It should be a national trail knowing that George Washington could have been killed here,” he told Fox News Digital. 

“That happened right here in Butler County.” 

On July 13, 2024 — more than 270 years after Washington escaped an assassination attempt, just six miles away from his campsite in Butler County — former President Trump, too, was spared death as a bullet grazed his right ear. 

The similarities between the two events were not lost on Cohen.

The attempt on Washington’s life was “pretty much like what we just had,” he told Fox News Digital, referring to what happened to Trump.

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“Isn’t that crazy?” said Cohen.