Following his emotional account at the RNC, former President Donald Trump raised his own questions about the attempt on his life and asserted one striking failure.
“…I think that was a mistake.”
(Video: Fox News)
Fresh off the Republican National Convention where the party unified around their 2024 nominees for president and vice president, Trump and running mate Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance sat down with Fox News host Jesse Watters for an interview set to premiere Monday.
A preview of what was discussed including one telling moment where the president responded to a question about what he himself had been made aware of before taking the stage, adding to the demand for answers.
The host of “Jesse Watters Primetime” raised security’s awareness of the would-be assassin in the lead-up to the tragedy and said, “Mistakes were made. They were monitoring this guy for an hour beforehand. No one told you not to take the stage?”
“Nobody mentioned it,” remarked Trump. “Nobody said there was a problem and I would’ve waited for 15 — they could’ve said, let’s wait for 15 minutes, 20 minutes, five minutes, something. Nobody said, I think that was a mistake.”
Additionally, the GOP leader raised many of the questions that the public and elected officials had posed since the rally in Butler, Pennsylvania and posited to Watters, “How did somebody get on that roof? And why wasn’t he reported, because people saw that he was on that roof.”
“When you have Trumpers screaming, the woman in the red shirt, she was screaming, ‘There’s a man on the roof,’ and other people, ‘There’s a man on the roof who’s got a gun.’ And that was quite a bit before I walked on the stage. So you would’ve thought somebody would’ve done something about it,” he added.
Trump’s point came after reports suggested there had been only 22 Secret Service agents available to cover the immense crowd gathered to show support for the president, and that they hadn’t even used a drone to maintain aerial surveillance of the event. It had also been noted that the suspect had been spotted by law enforcement officials no fewer than three times within 30 minutes before he had opened fire.
It also came as the Republican nominee had expressed in his own words just how close his brush with death had been when he retold the experience during his speech to the RNC.
“And I’ll tell you, I stand before you in this arena only by the grace of Almighty God,” said Trump after explaining how a turn of his head to look at a screen had likely meant the difference between life and death for him as he also honored the death of firefighter Corey Comperatore and voiced his concern for the injured, David Dutch and James Copenhaver.
Saturday, Texas Rep. Ronny Jackson (R), the former White House physician for Trump, released a statement following his own examination of the president’s injuries and noted there was still “intermittent bleeding” due to the “highly vascular nature of the ear.”
“He will have further evaluations, including a comprehensive hearing exam, as needed. He will follow up with his primary care physician, as directed by the doctors that initially evaluated him. In summary, former President Trump is doing well, and he is recovering as expected from the gunshot wound sustained last Saturday afternoon,” the lawmaker noted before adding, “I am extremely thankful his life was spared. It is an absolute miracle he wasn’t killed.”
Native of Brooklyn, NY, Kevin Haggerty is a graduate of Hunter College where he studied Cultural Anthropology and Geography. An avid reader and truth seeker, he currently resides in Texas with his wife and their dog and, when he isn't researching current events and their impacts, you'll find him spending time with friends and family or working on his next novel.
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