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Trump talks dramatic details of failed assassination, admits ‘big lapse’ by Secret Service

August 26, 2024 | | Print Article

Former President Donald Trump gave a detailed recounting of the failed assassination attempt against him and how he “knew exactly what was happening” at that moment.

Trump recalled the chain of events that unfolded on July 13 in Butler, Pennsylvania where his rally turned deadly as Thomas Matthew Crooks opened fire a few minutes into his speech. Trump’s ear was grazed by a bullet and two rally-goers were critically injured. A third attendee, retired firefighter Corey Comperatore, died trying to shield his family from the hail of bullets.

“A lot of times, and I was thinking about this, it would seem like a surreal moment—like you don’t realize almost where you are,” Trump told Breitbart News in an interview from his Palm Beach, Florida home after the attempt on his life.

“I never felt that. I knew immediately I got hit by a bullet.”

“So what are the odds that I’m looking to the right?” Trump said. “The poster is never used early, and it’s never on the right it’s always on the left. If you take the odds of this whole thing it’s like 10 million to one and you only have an eighth of a second.”

“I’m turning, and I’m dead here, I’m dead here, I’m dead here, dead, dead, alive, dead,” the Republican presidential nominee said, referring to the graphic that was displayed to his right during the speech. “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.”

“The only reason I looked—I use that poster, that chart a maximum of 20 percent. I just don’t use it. It’s always at the end and it’s always on my left. The only time I use it is at the end of the speech,” he emphasized, going on to describe the moment he was hit.

“Then remember I took my hand and I looked my hand has blood all over my hand. All over—and I went down. If I didn’t go down I would have been hit. That I don’t consider as lucky because that’s going down,” he continued. “The only thing I could have been is flat. I’m like this, and he was exactly there 90 degrees—dead parallel.”

The former president recounted that his Secret Service detail feared he had been hit multiple times and that the experience was anything but “surreal.”

“Don’t forget eight bullets went over me. So if I’m not down, the luckiest was looking this way. Being down is a little different because the bullets were flying over my head. They killed the fireman and they really badly hurt two people who are recovering and are going to make it,” he continued. “You would think it would be a surreal experience. It wasn’t. I knew exactly what was happening. I knew I was hit in the ear. I had seven very large people on top of me.”

He explained that the Secret Service agents “thought I was hit in multiple places because there were a lot of shots fired. And they didn’t know those shots went over my head.” He also suggested that had the bullet met the intended target, “my head would have exploded like a watermelon.”

Trump recalled that he would not agree with the Secret Service’s decision to take him away on a stretcher.

“I was really actually angry because I didn’t want to go on a stretcher. I wanted to get up and I felt I could get up,” he told Breitbart, recalling how that led to the “iconic” moment when he held his fist in the air yelling “Fight, fight, fight!”

While recognizing the bravery of the agents who sacrificed their own bodies to shield him, Trump acknowledged the failures that day.

“So, Secret Service they obviously had a big lapse when they didn’t cover the roof of that building,” he 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 78-year-old nominee also spoke of the bravery of the crowd who did not disperse in panic and how rhetoric by Democrats and the left encourages violent behavior like that of the 20-year-old would-be assassin who was killed by a counter-sniper.

“Being president is a dangerous profession,” Trump told the outlet. “If you look, how many people have been assassinated? Then you see how many people have been attempted?”

“You can never be too prepared for that—you don’t want to be prepared for that actually,” he said. “Being president is a very dangerous thing. I knew that—I always knew that. Especially if you have strong opinions and strong convictions like you want borders and a strong economy and a strong military and you want things that are important for the nation. The tougher you are in terms of things that are important for the nation the more dangerous it becomes.”

Frieda Powers
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