President Donald Trump has opened up on the moment he was nearly killed by a sniper a year later.
Turning his head at the vital moment, the 5.56 mm caliber bullet fired from would-be assassin Thomas Matthews Crooks’ AR-15 grazed Trump’s ear just millimetres from killing him during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
‘Well, it was unforgettable,’ Trump told his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, in an interview that will air on Fox News.
‘I didn’t know exactly what was going on. I got whacked. There’s no question about that.’
Immediately after gunshots were fired at the future president at the outdoor rally on July 13, 2024, Secret Service agents surrounded him. He made a fist in the air and mouthed the words, ‘Fight! Fight! Fight!’ as agents ushered him off the stage with a bleeding ear.
‘Fortunately, I got down quickly,’ the president said in a preview clip released on Thursday.
‘People were screaming, and I got down quickly, fortunately, because I think they shot eight bullets.’
He proceeded to say that the Secret Service had a ‘bad day’ in allowing Crooks to reach a roof from where he fired.
‘I have great confidence in these people. I know the people. And they’re very talented, very capable,’ he said of the agency.
‘But they had a bad day. And I think they’ll admit that. They had a rough day.’
The president said the Secret Service made a ‘mistake’ in not having someone in the building that Crooks climbed.
‘They should have had somebody in the building… They should have had communications with the local police, they weren’t tied in, and they should have been tied in. So there were mistakes made,’ he said.
‘But I was satisfied in terms of the bigger plot, the larger plot, I was satisfied.’
He lauded a Secret Service counter sniper for doing a ‘fantastic job’ in shooting and killing Crooks.
‘He went about his business. Less than just about four seconds, and that’s when it all stopped and he got him perfectly from a very long distance,’ the president said.
‘So we got a little bit lucky in that regard.’
The full segment is set to air on My View with Lara Trump on Saturday night.
In his 2024 election victory speech, he referred back to that day in Butler, saying, ‘Many people have told me that God spared my life for a reason.’
He survived a second apparent assassination attempt two months after the Butler shooting, while golfing at his Trump National Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida. Secret Service agents opened fire on a man spotted poking a gun through a fence line.
On Wednesday, Secret Service Deputy Director Matt Quinn said that six agents working the Butler rally were suspended without pay or benefits and that the agency is ‘laser focused on fixing the root cause of the problem’.
‘Secret Service is totally accountable for Butler,’ Quinn told CBS News.
‘Butler was an operational failure and we are focused today on ensuring that it never happens again.’
The president has since brushed off an Iranian official’s threat to assassinate him poolside at his Mar-a-Lago residence with a drone, after the US bombed three Iranian nuclear sites amid the war with Israel.
‘It’s been a long time. I don’t know, maybe I was around seven or so. I’m not too big into it,’ the president said of sunbathing on Wednesday.
‘I guess it’s a threat. I’m not sure it’s a threat, actually, but perhaps it is.’
Trump has revealed he will spend the one-year anniversary of the Butler attempted assassination on Sunday at the FIFA Club World Cup Final at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey.
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