President Trump reflected on the attempt made on his life in Butler, Pennsylvania, two years ago, telling Fox News that “God was with me.”
During a phone interview on “Fox & Friends,” President Trump discussed his near assassination on July 13, 2024, in Pennsylvania, noting that his sons told him there was almost “no chance” of missing from that distance with the rifle that was used by the would-be assassin. His sons compared the distance to “sinking a two-foot putt,” which is “almost automatic.”
“God was with me,” Trump said. “I turned my head to show a chart, a chart I never show on the right-hand side, but this time I did.” The president added that he uses a chart “maybe one in ten times” during rallies.
“If I looked to the left, I wouldn’t be talking to you right now,” he added, going on to compare the shot to a mosquito bite. “I look over to the right as it’s coming down, and I said, ‘Wow, what was that?’ I said, ‘It’s either the biggest, most violent mosquito in history, or I just got shot. It was one of the two things.’”
According to a recent report from the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General, the Secret Service failed to “warn President Trump’s protective detail that Crooks had a range finder, a long gun, and had climbed onto the American Glass Research International complex’s roof” because there was no established joint communications room. Secret Service further failed to “share intelligence about a long-distance threat to President
Trump with the Pittsburgh Field Office leadership,” and failed to “secure the area outside the perimeter.”
The report highlighted other security failures from that day. “Secret Service members did not receive 102 radio transmissions that local law enforcement officers in a separate communications room received concerning an increasingly intense search for a suspicious person,” the report says. “Instead, we found that the Secret Service received only five phone calls and three text messages about Crooks.”
The alleged shooter, Thomas Crooks, was killed by Secret Service agents after opening fire.
