Former President Donald Trump gave an exclusive interview to Breitbart News on Sunday in which he shared his experience of the assassination attempt on his life at a Butler, Pennsylvania rally on July 13.
Trump was shot in the ear during the attempt, and three rallygoers were also shot, one fatally, by a 20-year-old gunman who lay in wait on a rooftop less than 200 yards away.
Trump said he knew immediately that he was shot and said the odds were "millions to nothing" that he didn't get shot in the head, which he believes would have been fatal.
“I’m turning, and I’m dead here, I’m dead here, I’m dead here, dead, dead, alive, dead,” Trump said. “So, think, you only have this exact spot right here. This is an amazing phenomena. It’s millions to nothing. There’s about an eighth of a second where I’m good. The rest of the time you’re dead.”
He said that if he hadn't gone down as soon as he was hit, some of the other eight bullets fired by gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks likely would have hit him.
“How about if you had that on slow-motion instant replay?” he said. “Couple of things just to think of it because it’s got to be divine intervention.”
Trump said his views on the Secret Service were mixed. Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned after the attempt and others were put on administrative leave.
“So, Secret Service they obviously had a big lapse when they didn’t cover the roof of that building,” Trump said. “Yet, they were very brave when they jumped on me when I went down. I reacted very well because I went down fast.”
“The Secret Service sniper was incredible,” Trump went on later in the interview. “One shot from 400 yards right there—can you believe it? He didn’t know about it. He was a shooter—an unbelievable shooter. He heard the noise, he looks around—I guess his eyes are good. That’s four football fields—that’s a lot.”
Breitbart pointed out that 12% of presidents have been assassinated and many more have had plots against them before, during and after their tenure in office.
“Being president is a dangerous profession,” Trump told Breitbart News. “If you look, how many people have been assassinated? Then you see how many people have been attempted? You know, Reagan almost died—he came close to dying actually. People don’t know that, but they thought they were going to lose him.”
“It’s a pretty high number,” Trump said of the number of presidential assassinations. “And if you talk about attempted, attempted is pretty bad too.”
Trump said he insisted on getting up and putting his fist in the air after being shot and resisted being taken out on a stretcher. Some of the Secret Service members protecting him thought he had been hit more than once, and didn't know the gunman had been taken out.
“People think it’s the most iconic moment,” Trump said.
He praised the crowd for not stampeding out of the rally location, preventing even more injuries and possibly even deaths from trampling. "They didn’t flinch," he said.
