President Donald Trump told reporters at the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, on Wednesday that Iran wants to assassinate him, and that his luck may not hold forever. The remarks came days before the two-year anniversary of the Butler, Pennsylvania, shooting that nearly killed him, and against a backdrop of escalating Iranian hostility that has included death bounties, crosshair posters, and a charged murder-for-hire plot against one of his former advisors.
Standing alongside Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other top cabinet officials, Trump was blunt about where he stands on Tehran's target list, and about what that might eventually mean.
"I'm on every single one of their lists, and so far I guess I've been a little bit lucky, but that maybe doesn't last very long, because that's the way it goes," Trump said, as reported by the Daily Mail.
This was not abstract speculation. Trump has survived at least one assassination attempt. In July 2024, a gunman named Thomas Crooks opened fire at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, grazing Trump's ear and killing rallygoer Corey Comperatore, a 50-year-old firefighter, as the New York Post reported. Crooks was shot dead at the scene. The anniversary of that day is just days away.
And the Iranian threat is not new. US intelligence officials repeatedly warned during Trump's 2024 campaign that Iran was plotting to kill him and former officials from his first administration. The motive traces to Trump's 2020 order to kill Revolutionary Guard General Qasem Soleimani in a drone strike, an act Tehran has never forgiven.
Federal prosecutors have already charged a Revolutionary Guard operative with offering $300,000 to have John Bolton, Trump's former national security advisor, murdered on American soil. Trump's ex-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former Iran envoy Brian Hook were both placed under round-the-clock government protection because of the ongoing threat from Tehran.
Ivanka Trump has spoken publicly about watching the Butler shooting unfold in real time, describing the horror of seeing her father targeted on live television.
Trump's comments at the NATO summit did not arrive in a vacuum. Earlier this week, the funeral of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, killed in the war, became a stage for open threats against the American president. Pro-regime demonstrators in Tehran carried posters featuring crosshairs over Trump's face. Other posters bore the faces of JD Vance, Pete Hegseth, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu alongside the phrase "There will be blood."
Footage from Monday's funeral procession showed mourners chanting "Death to America" and "Death to Israel." American and British flags were set ablaze. A Trump effigy was hanged near the front of the march. Mourners placed a death bounty on Trump, though the precise amount, mechanism, and organizers remain unclear.
Hardline Iranian lawmakers in Tehran went further, calling for missiles to be fired at Trump's location at the summit. No names of those lawmakers have been publicly identified.
Trump addressed Iran's post-Khamenei leadership at his press conference with characteristic directness: "They're gone now. They have another set of leaders. They may be gone."
He continued: "Who knows? And you know what, I may be gone too because I'm their number one target. It's out all over the place. I'm the number one, because they're scum."
The timing of Trump's remarks also coincides with damning new findings about the agency tasked with keeping him alive. A Department of Homeland Security Inspector General report released last week found that the Secret Service missed 102 radio calls flagging Thomas Crooks on a nearby roof with a long gun at the Butler rally, and never warned the agents at Trump's side to get him off the stage.
One hundred and two calls. Every one of them a chance to pull the president to safety. Every one of them missed.
That report landed just as the Secret Service was again managing heightened security around Trump during his travel from the NATO summit. Newsmax reported that the Secret Service urged Trump against using the new Air Force One during his return from Turkey amid the resumed hostilities with Iran. Trump himself acknowledged that passengers were "probably on a dangerous flight" given the threats from Tehran.
White House Communications Director Steven Cheung said that "many enemies of America have their sights" on Trump, a statement that reads less like political rhetoric and more like a security briefing made public.
Security incidents at Trump properties have underscored the persistent nature of threats against the president and his family even on domestic soil.
The New York Post revealed in 2024 that US officials had received intelligence about an Iranian assassination plot against Trump weeks before the Butler shooting. The Secret Service boosted protection around Trump in response to that specific threat, yet it still failed to prevent a gunman from reaching a rooftop with a clear line of fire.
The Butler shooting does not appear to have been connected to the Iranian plot. But the overlap, active foreign assassination planning running simultaneously with a domestic attack that nearly succeeded, illustrates the scale of the security challenge surrounding this president.
A National Security Council spokesperson said at the time: "We have been tracking Iranian threats against former Trump administration officials for years, dating back to the last administration." The Secret Service said it was "constantly receiving new potential threat information and taking action to adjust resources, as needed."
Adjusting resources did not stop 102 radio calls from going unanswered.
Calls to reject political violence have come from figures across the political spectrum, yet the threats against Trump continue to escalate from both foreign and domestic sources.
The Iranian hostility is not merely rhetorical. Trump declared his ceasefire with Iran "over" and ordered fresh military strikes after Iranian attacks on commercial vessels in the Strait of Hormuz. The cycle of provocation and response has ratcheted tensions to a level not seen in years, and Trump's physical safety sits at the center of that escalation.
Iran's regime has made no secret of its desire for revenge over the Soleimani strike. The crosshair posters, the death bounties, the murder-for-hire plots, the calls for missile attacks on a sitting president's location, these are not vague grievances. They are operational signals from a regime that has demonstrated both intent and capability.
Casual depictions of Trump's death in American popular culture have drawn fierce backlash, and for good reason, the man has already been shot at, and a foreign government is openly promising to finish the job.
Several questions hang over this story. What is the precise nature of the death bounty placed on Trump at Khamenei's funeral, who organized it, and how much was offered? Who are the hardline Iranian lawmakers calling for missile strikes on a NATO summit? What is the full scope of the DHS Inspector General's findings beyond the 102 missed radio calls? And what has Iran's new post-Khamenei leadership actually said or done about the assassination plots that predated their rise?
None of these questions have been publicly answered. The threat environment around this president is dense, documented, and growing, and the institutions responsible for his protection have already proven they can fail at the worst possible moment.
When a president says out loud that his luck may run out, and the evidence backs him up, the only proper response is to make sure luck has nothing to do with it.
