Live updates on Trump shooting: Trump praises Secret Service and calls Biden’s call “nice”

A day after he was grazed by a bullet in an assassination attempt, former President Donald Trump said he wanted to use the opportunity to deliver a message of unity.

“The speech I was going to give on Thursday was supposed to be a smash hit,” Trump said as he boarded his plane en route to the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. “Frankly, it’s going to be a very different speech now.”

“It’s an opportunity to bring the country together. I’ve been given that opportunity,” Trump added.

He said that in the past 24 hours, numerous people from across the political spectrum have called him and described the moment when he turned his head on stage and looked at the screen, which could have ultimately saved his life.

“That reality is setting in right now,” Trump said. “I hardly look away from the crowd. If I hadn’t done that at that moment, we wouldn’t be talking today, right?”

The world has now seen the image of the former president raising his fist with blood on his ear, and Trump said he did it because he wanted to show the country that it would be OK. He wanted the people of Pennsylvania to know that “America is moving forward, we are moving forward, we are strong.”

Trump recalled: “The energy that came from the people there at that moment, they just stood there. It’s hard to describe what that felt like, but I knew the world was watching. I knew history would judge it, and I knew I had to let them know we were OK.”

-Kelsey Walsh of ABC News