This is a different kind of cancel culture.
Even President Ronald Reagan’s failed assassin-turned-folk singer is too afraid to step foot in the Big Apple — calling it a “cesspool of crime” after canceling an upcoming gig.
“I’m afraid of New York City and I just don’t want to go there right now,” John Hinckley Jr. — who tried to kill Reagan in 1981 — told The Post days after pulling the plug on a June show scheduled on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
Hinckley announced the performance on X last week but pulled out because “he said New York is a ‘dangerous mess’ and ‘had a bad vibe,’” the event organizers told ticket holders for the unannounced venue in a bizarre email obtained by The Post.
The cancellation was first reported by local news outlet Patch.
Hinckley claimed his fans urged him not to perform because of violent crime across the city.
[They] started contacting me and telling me not to go to New York City because it’s so dangerous,” he told The Post by phone Thursday. “They’re saying, ‘Don’t do it, John. Because you won’t be safe.’
“I watch the news like everyone else and I see how dangerous New York City is with everything going on, so I told the guys who were putting on the show not to do it,” the 68-year-old added.
In an interview with The Post last month, Hinckley complained that he was a “victim of cancel culture” after a Connecticut performance was scrapped, and he also gushed about possibly performing in the Big Apple one day.
But he said he has changed his mind.
“If I’m going to put on a show anywhere, I want it to be safe for me and the audience, and right now with the way New York City is, I don’t think it can be safe for me or the audience,” he said from his Williamsburg, Virginia home.
Hinckley, who releases his songs on YouTube to his 37,000 subscribers, previously told The Post more than a dozen of his gigs were canceled because “owners don’t want the controversy.”
His sold-out debut gig at the Market Hotel in Brooklyn in July 2022 — set for less than a month after he was fully released from court supervision — was nixed by the venue for safety concerns after backlash.
Tickets to his upcoming June show, priced at $55.20, were selling quickly, according to the event organizer’s email shared with The Post by a ticket holder.
“I would have sold it out,” Hinckley boasted. “I sold out Market Hotel in Brooklyn in three days before they backed out. I have a pretty good fan base in the New York City area, but unfortunately, right now it’s too dangerous.”
Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity after he shot and wounded the 40th US president on March 30, 1981, outside the Hilton in Washington, DC.
In the attack, Hinckley fired a .22 caliber pistol, striking the former president, Secret Service agent Tim McCarthy, police officer Thomas Delahanty and press secretary James Brady.
Brady, who went on to become a well-known advocate for gun control, was the most seriously injured, spending the rest of his life confined to a wheelchair before dying from his injuries in 2014.
Hinckley was inspired to kill Reagan after watching the 1976 film “Taxi Driver” and forming an infatuation with actress Jodie Foster, whom he was hoping to impress with the assassination.
He spent more than three decades in a mental hospital and was released under supervision in 2016.
Since the shooting, Hinckley has sworn he’s a changed man, nothing like the deranged gunman who tried to kill the president.
Years later, he spends his time painting and writing songs.
He is also floating the idea of opening up a music venue near his hometown.
Asked what would entice him to perform in New York City, he said: “Well things would have to change radically and I don’t think they are. I see it as getting worse and worse.
“I see on the news women walking down the street getting punched in the face,” he added.
“All the migrant crime, people getting pushed in front of subway trains, all the murders and rape and stuff.”
