The man who shot President Ronald Reagan with a .22-caliber revolver two months after his first inauguration is likely stewing today at his home in Virginia’s Tidewater region.
John Hinckley Jr., who recently rebranded himself a folk singer, was 25 when he nearly assassinated Reagan and maimed White House Press Secretary James Brady outside of the Washington Hilton. Hinckley also shot Secret Service agent Tim McCarthy and police officer Thomas Delahanty.
As the New York Post reports, the wannabe David Crosby is now claiming to be the latest victim of cancel culture after multiple venues canceled his shows.
“It keeps happening over and over again,” he lamented after his latest concert was scrapped:
Hinckley, who releases his songs on YouTube to his 36,000 subscribers, estimated that a dozen of his scheduled performances were canned because “owners don’t want the controversy.”
“They book me and then the show gets announced and then the venue starts getting backlash,” he told The Post over the phone from his Williamsburg, Virginia, home.
“The owners always cave, they cancel. It’s happened so many times, it’s kinda what I expect,” he added.
“I don’t really get upset,” Hinckley claimed.
Brady eventually succumbed to his injuries in 2014. Although authorities ruled his death a homicide, linking it to the gunshot wound that left him permanently disabled 33 years prior, prosecutors chose not to file new charges against Hinckley.
After decades in a mental hospital following a successful insanity defense, U.S. District Court Judge Paul Friedman ruled on June 1, 2022, that Hinckley would be unconditionally released two weeks later.
Hinckley had hoped the attack would impress actress Jodie Foster, whom he became obsessed with after seeing “Taxi Driver.”
“I’m just not the person I used to be. I have a different mindset than I did long, long ago,” he told the Post over the phone, refusing to discuss the assassination attempt in any detail.