Donald Trump has said he is lucky to be alive after being targeted by a shooter during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday.
The suspected assailant, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, fired at least five rounds from an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle in the direction of the former US president, with one bullet grazing his right ear. A Trump supporter was killed and two others severely wounded in the attack, and Crooks was shot dead on site by Secret Service officers.
"I am not supposed to be here, I am supposed to be dead,” Trump said in an interview with the New York Post on Sunday. The 78-year-old spoke to reporters on board his private jet, on the way to Milwaukee for the Republican National Convention, where he is expected to be selected as the party’s presidential nominee for November 5 election.
The tycoon-turned-politician said a doctor told him it was a “miracle” that he survived. “By luck or by God, many people are saying it’s by God I’m still here,” he added.
According to Trump, he avoided a fatal wound only because when the first shot was fired he turned his head slightly to the right to read a chart on illegal immigrants in the US.
The Secret Service “did a fantastic job” by swiftly neutralizing the attacker, he said. “They took him out with one shot right between the eyes.”
Trump said he wanted to continue the rally after the attack, but agents told him it was not safe and that he needed to go to hospital. “I just wanted to keep speaking, but I just got shot,” he recalled. As he was led off stage, the former president was pictured raising his fist and shouting: “Fight! Fight! Fight!”
“A lot of people say it is the most iconic photo they’ve ever seen. They are right and I did not die. Usually you have to die to have an iconic picture,” he insisted.
Trump said he appreciated the call from US President Joe Biden following the attack. It was a “fine” gesture and Biden was “very nice” during the conversation, he stressed.
The former president said he had prepared “an extremely tough speech... all about the corrupt, horrible administration” for the event in Milwaukee, but “threw it away” after the assassination attempt. “I want to try to unite our country… but I do not know if that is possible. People are very divided.”