Reflections | Just as Donald Trump survived assassination attempt, so did a Chinese emperor in 1542
- Nearly 500 years before Republican US presidential candidate Donald Trump dodged a bullet, the Jiajing Emperor dodged an assassin’s noose
The failed assassination attempt on Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States who is in the running to be the 47th, has the essential elements of American-style political theatre down pat: the Stars and Stripes proudly flying, a defiant fist in the air, a lone shooter and his gun, and the wildest conspiracy theories.
With only four more months to go before Americans choose their president, four more years of Trump is well within the realm of possibility, to the chagrin, and delight, of many people both within and outside the US.
The Ming dynasty’s Jiajing Emperor, who reigned from 1522 to 1566, survived a dramatic assassination attempt led by the unlikeliest of masterminds and assassins: two of his consorts and a bevy of palace maids.
The official account of the assassination, the result of investigations after the incident and confessions obtained from the perpetrators, reads almost like a scene from a Marx Brothers or Mel Brooks movie.
