Donald Trump describes the assassination attempt in first interviews since his shooting

Getty

“I shouldn’t be here. I should be dead,” Donald Trump said at a rally in Pennsylvania one day after an assassination attempt on him.

I should be dead.”

The bandaged former president and likely Republican nominee described the experience of being shot in the ear on stage at a campaign rally in a battleground state on Saturday and sat down with reporters from the Washington Examiner and that New York Post on the way to the GOP convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

No pictures of Trump were allowed, but

The FBI has said that Corey Comperatore, a 50-year-old firefighter at the rally, was killed and two other people were critically injured when the gunman opened fire at the rally. The now-dead gunman is 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park, PA. After making his way onto a building near the rally, where an investigation is still underway into how the Secret Service and local police allowed Cook to approach the rally in the first place,

“I wanted to keep talking — I wanted to keep talking, but I just got shot,” Trump told the Washington Examiner in the same double session on the plane from Keystone State to Wisconsin. “It’s a very surreal experience and you never know what you’re going to do until something like this happens.”

In this context, Trump said:e examiner and the Rupert Murdoch-owned post that the shooting probably didn’t really appease him. But it also forced him and his inner circle to change their tactics. “If that hadn’t happened, we would have had a pretty well-prepared and extremely tough speech,” Trump said from his customized 737 at the convention. “Now we have a speech that exudes more unity.”

“I want to try to unite our country, but I don’t know if that’s possible,” Trump told the tabloid. Post Office. “People are very divided.”

This sentiment is largely consistent with Trump’s previous comments, but is a little more pessimistic: During the actual shooting, however, Trump was much more adamant. Trump yelled “fight, fight, fight” and raised one arm in the air as agents attempted to force the candidate off the stage and into a waiting car.

Earlier on Sunday, after putting his campaign on hold over Trump’s shooting, Joe Biden addressed the nation from the Oval Office. During his debate, he was besieged by members of his own party who condemned Trump’s shooting, mourned the losses and declared: “There is no place for this kind of violence, for any kind of violence, in America, ever, period.”

The Republican convention will take place from July 15 to 18, and Trump officially expects the delegates on Thursday evening. Even though the Democrats are currently playing nice, their convention is scheduled to take place in Chicago from August 19 to 22, 2024.