DIVA DOWN

Reagan’s Would-Be Assassin Says He’s Cancel Culture’s Biggest Victim

John Hinckley Jr., who is trying to make his way as a folk singer after being granted an unconditional release, is upset that venues keep canceling his gigs.

With yet another one of his music gigs having been yanked from the books, John Hinckley Jr. is moaning that “cancel culture” has come for him, the man who in 1981 tried to assassinate then-President Ronald Reagan. “I think it’s fair to say: I’m a victim of cancel culture,” he told the New York Post over the phone on Wednesday after an upcoming gig in Connecticut was nixed by its organizers. “It keeps happening over and over again.” Hinckley Jr., 68, has been trying to make his way as a folk singer after being granted an unconditional release in June 2022. After shooting Reagan—under the mistaken belief it would win him the affections of actress Jodie Foster—Hinckley Jr. was found not guilty by reason of insanity in 1982 and sent to a psychiatric hospital. After his release, he announced his intention to stage a “redemption tour,” only to immediately be met with resistance as venues he’d booked began to cancel on him. A Brooklyn venue drew headlines for pulling the plug on a sold-out July 2022 show, citing the “dangerously radicalized, reactionary climate” his appearance might provoke. “They book me and then the show gets announced and then the venue starts getting backlash,” Hinckley told the Post. “The owners always cave, they cancel. It’s happened so many times it’s kinda what I expect… I don’t really get upset.”