In a recent interview with Breitbart News, former President Trump recounts the failed assassination attempt on his life claiming he “knew exactly what was happening” during the moment as bullets grazed his ear.
“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 said from his Florida home.
“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 noted. “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 former president said. “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 then describing when he was hit by the bullet.
“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. The only thing I could have been is flat. I’m like this, and he was exactly there 90 degrees—dead parallel.”
“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. 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 continued.
Trump claimed that his Secret Service detail feared he was hit in multiple spots. 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.”
The former president also would not allow the Secret Service to take him out 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, then wanted to reassure the crowd of his supporters that he was alright by raising his fist in the air yelling “Fight, fight, fight!”
Former President Trump greatly appreciates the bravery of the agents surrounding him but acknowledges the massive failure of the Secret Service that led to this event.
“So, Secret Service they obviously had a big lapse when they didn’t cover the roof of that building,” Trump said. “Yet, they were very brave when they jumped on me when I went down. I reacted very well because I went down fast.
“Being president is a dangerous profession,” Trump explained. “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 continued. “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.”