Trump says he ‘should have been dead’ after attempted assassination at Pennsylvania rally

Following the attempted assassination at his rally in Pennsylvania, former President Donald Trump said in an interview with the New York Post on Sunday that he believes he narrowly escaped his own death.

“I shouldn’t be here, I should be dead,” Trump told the Post on Sunday.

Trump spoke to The Washington Post this week while en route to Milwaukee for the Republican National Convention. The former president reportedly had a large white bandage on his right ear because of the injury he sustained in the shooting.

Trump recalled turning his head slightly to the right during the rally to read a chart about illegal immigrants – a split-second move that he said allowed him to dodge a shot that would have fatally struck him.

The suspected shooter was killed by the Secret Service shortly before its agents covered Trump and brought him to safety.

Jason Miller, a senior adviser to Trump’s campaign, said in an interview with NBC’s “Today” show on Monday that Trump is “very lucky” to be alive.

“And as he said, it’s only by the grace of God that he’s still with us. It’s a miracle that President Trump turned his head just enough to avoid the bullet at the right moment,” Miller said. “And the message that President Trump takes away from this is very simple: We must unite America. We must unite the country.”

In his interview with the Washington Post, Trump said he had initially prepared an “extremely tough” RNC speech about the “corrupt, horrible” Biden administration, but “threw it away” after the assassination.

The former president reportedly said he was working on a new speech instead because “I want to try to unite our country,” adding, “But I don’t know if that’s possible. People are very divided.”

When asked by host Savannah Guthrie on the “Today” show whether he expected a different tone from Trump in the future, Miller referred to a post by Trump on his social media page Truth Social on Sunday in which he called for “resilient in our faith and defiant in the face of evil.”

“This is a moment in our country’s history where we are in a powder keg,” Miller said. “There is so much political division.”

“The disunity and unrest at the national level is simply not good for the country,” he added. “This cannot continue. We must come together in this moment.”