Donald Trump says he heard the ‘zip, zip’ sound of bullets flying over his head after gunman Thomas Crooks opened fire at his campaign rally in Pennsylvania.
The former president claims his Secret Service detail ‘thought it was over when I went down’ because of ‘a lot of blood coming’ after the bullet grazed his ear.
Trump, 78, argued with his agents, telling them how he was ‘not going on a stretcher’ and instead vowed to ‘get up’.
The GOP 2024 nominee, as he was escorted off the stage, defiantly fist pumped to a crowd of his supporters and encouraged them to ‘fight’.
He has also revealed he asked Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle, who was brutally grilled in Congress Monday over security failures that lead to the assassination attempt, how 20-year-old Crooks got on the roof when the security chief visited him after the shooting.
Donald Trump, during a Monday interview on Fox News, revealed that he heard the ‘zip, zip’ sound of bullets flying over his head after gunmen Thomas Crooks opened fire at his campaign rally in Pennsylvania
Trump, pictured the moment he was shot on July 13, claims his Secret Service detail ‘thought it was over when I went down’ because of ‘a lot of blood coming’ after the bullet grazed his ear. The former president said he argued with his agents, telling them how he was ‘not going on a stretcher’ and instead vowed to ‘get up’
Trump was seen covered in blood after Crooks opened fire into his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13 and shot his ear.
The former president, joined by his running mate Ohio Senator JD Vance on Fox News, has now detailed his agents’ response to the moment he was shot.
‘They wanted to put me on a stretcher,’ he told host Jesse Watters on Monday. ‘And I said, ‘I’m not going on a stretcher,’ because I just felt it was the ear.
‘There was a lot of blood coming – I don’t know if you’ve heard this but the ear causes, they say the most in the body.’
He explained that his security team thought he had been hit in the chest area, but he reiterated: ‘I’m telling you, I’m ok.’
‘I’m fine, I’m going to get up. I want to get up. I am not going to be taken out on a stretcher,’ Trump recounted.
He added: ‘They thought it was over when I went down because they saw the blood immediately and then when I put the hand up everybody was happy. That was the time when they realized I was ok.’
Trump, who pumped his first at the crowd and appeared to mouth the word ‘fight’, was met with chants of ‘USA’ and ‘Make America Great Again’.
He has now praised the crowd for being ‘brave’ and hailed America as an ‘incredible country’.
‘It was a beautiful moment,’ he said of the aftermath. ‘The people on the stage were unbelievable and brave they were running past bullets.
‘They were all Secret Service that came running up and they were running past me with bullets – when I went down, bullets were coming over my head and you hear them, it’s like a zip, zip.’
The suspected shooter, 20-year-old nursing home aide Crooks, was killed by law enforcement at the rally. It is not clear what his motive was for the shooting.
Thomas Crooks, 20, opened fire at Trump’s campaign rally in Pennsylvania on July 13. Crooks’ body is seen on the roof from which he carried out his assassination attempt after he was shot dead by agents
Trump is surrounded by Secret Service agents as he is helped off the stage at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13, 2024
has also revealed he asked Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle, who was brutally grilled in Congress Monday (pictured) over security failures that lead to the assassination attempt, how 20-year-old Crooks got on the roof when the security chief visited him after the shooting
The former president also revealed that Cheatle visited him in the days following the incident. He says she was ‘nice’ but claims that ‘somebody should have made sure there was nobody on the roof’ from which Crooks shot him.
‘That roof was a dead aim right onto the stage. And they said they didn’t have the manpower for it, which is crazy,’ he told Fox News.
‘They said 130 yards is like sinking a one-foot putt. It’s considered really close.’
Trump said he was ‘surprised’ by how close the gunmen was to the stage and claims he was told that from that distance ‘a bad shot would usually hit the target’.
‘Somebody’s got to be there,’ he said, adding: ‘And it’s essentially a flat roof. I mean, I noticed that she said, well, this is a slope roof where you think of like a barn where you have, this thing had just a little – a little upswing in it, a few degrees. This was a not – it essentially was a flat roof.’
Trump alleged he security chief was given ‘false information’ about the slope of the roof. He also demanded that someone be held responsible for the security failures.
‘I thought she was very nice. But, you know, you have to answer why couldn’t I have stayed off the stage for five minutes while they do their work,’ Trump said.
‘Why couldn’t, you know, how does a situation happen where a roof that’s plainly in sight from the location where I was speaking, why would somebody not have seen that?’
Trump pumped a fist at the crowd and appeared to mouth ‘fight’ before being escorted off the stage by his security detail on July 13, 2024
A view of the site of the July 13, Trump campaign rally, on the grounds of the Butler Farm Show, which was visited by members of the House Committee on Homeland Security on Monday, July 22, 2024
Rep. Pat Fallon, R-Texas, questions Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle as she testifies before the House Oversight and Accountability Committee on Monday about the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump at a campaign event in Pennsylvania
Cheatle admitted Monday that her agency failed in its mission to protect Trump, as lawmakers of both major political parties demanded during a highly contentious congressional hearing that she resign over the security failures at the rally.
She was berated for hours by Republicans and Democrats, repeatedly angering lawmakers by evading questions about the investigation during the first hearing over the July 13 assassination attempt.
Cheatle called the attempt on Trump’s life the Secret Service’s ‘most significant operational failure’ in decades, and vowed to ‘move heaven and earth’ to get to the bottom of what went wrong and make sure there’s no repeat of it.
‘The Secret Service’s solemn mission is to protect our nation’s leaders. On July 13th, we failed,’ she told lawmakers on the House Oversight and Accountability Committee.
Cheatle acknowledged that the Secret Service was told about a suspicious person two to five times before the shooting at the rally.
She also revealed that the roof from which Crooks opened fire had been identified as a potential vulnerability days before the rally.
Cheatle said she apologized to Trump in a phone call after the assassination attempt.
Yet she remained defiant that she was the ‘right person’ to lead the Secret Service, even as she said she takes full responsibility the security lapses.
When Republican Rep. Nancy Mace suggested Cheatle begin drafting her resignation letter from the hearing room, Cheatle responded, ‘No, thank you.’
In a rare moment of unity for the often divided committee, the Republican chairman, Rep. James Comer, and its top Democrat, Rep. Jamie Raskin, issued a letter calling on Cheatle to step down.
Secret Service raced to the stage to protect Trump after shots were fired
Trump had blood streaming down his cheeks as Secret Service agents put him to the floor
The White House didn’t immediately comment on whether President Joe Biden still has confidence in Cheatle after her testimony.
Democrats and Republicans were united in their exasperation as Cheatle said she didn’t know or couldn’t answer numerous questions more than a week after the shooting that left one spectator dead. At one point, Mace used profanity as she accused Cheatle of lying and dodging questions, prompting calls for lawmakers to show ‘decorum.’
Lawmakers pressed Cheatle on how the gunman could get so close to the Republican presidential nominee when he was supposed to be carefully guarded, and why Trump was allowed to take the stage after local law enforcement had identified Crooks as suspicious.
‘It has been 10 days since an assassination attempt on a former president of the United States. Regardless of party, there need to be answers,’ said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York.
Cheatle acknowledged that Crooks had been seen by local law enforcement before the shooting with a rangefinder, a small device resembling binoculars that hunters use to measure distance from a target. She said the Secret Service would never have taken Trump onto the stage if it had known there was an ‘actual threat.’ Local law enforcement took a photo of Crooks and shared it after seeing him acting suspiciously, but he wasn’t deemed to be a ‘threat’ until seconds before he opened fire, she said.
‘An individual with a backpack is not a threat,’ Cheatle said. ‘An individual with a rangefinder is not a threat.’
Cheatle said local enforcement officers were inside the building from which Crooks fired. But when asked why there were no agents on the roof or if the Secret Service used drones to monitor the area, Cheatle said she is still waiting for the investigation to play out, prompting groans and outbursts from members on the committee.
‘Director Cheatle, because Donald Trump is alive, and thank God he is, you look incompetent,’ said Rep. Mike Turner, R-Ohio. ‘If he were killed, you would look culpable.’
Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle is sworn in before the House Oversight and Accountability Committee about the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump at a campaign event in Pennsylvania, at the Capitol on July 22, 2024
When Republican Rep. Nancy Mace suggested Cheatle begin drafting her resignation letter from the hearing room, Cheatle responded, ‘No, thank you’. Mace is pictured on Monday as she questions Cheatle about the attempt on Trump’s life
Rep. Ro Khanna, one of the Democrats who joined the calls for Cheatle to resign, noted that the Secret Service director who presided over the agency when there was an attempted assassination of former Republican President Ronald Reagan later stepped down.
‘The one thing we have to have in this country are agencies that transcend politics and have the confidence of independents, Democrats, Republicans, progressives and conservatives,’ Khanna said, adding that the Secret Service was no longer one of those agencies.
Trump was wounded in the ear, a former Pennsylvania fire chief was killed and two other attendees were injured when Crooks opened fire with an AR-style rifle shortly after Trump began speaking.
Cheatle said the agency hopes to have its internal investigation completed in 60 days. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has separately appointed a bipartisan, independent panel to review the assassination attempt, while the department,s inspector general has opened three investigations.
Meanwhile, a bipartisan delegation of about a dozen members of the House Committee on Homeland Security toured the shooting site Monday.
The lawmakers said they were the first group outside law enforcement to climb onto the roof where the shooter positioned himself.
Authorities have been hunting for clues into what motivated Crooks but have not found any ideological bent that could help explain his actions.
Investigators who searched his phone found photos of Trump, Biden and other senior government officials and found that he had looked up the dates for the Democratic National Conventional as well as Trump’s appearances.
He also searched for information about major depressive order.
Trump supporters cowered for safety in the stands after shots rang out on July 13, 2024
Trump’s rallies are a heavily guarded events. Pictures are law enforcement officers during the campaign event on July 13, 2024
The attack on Trump was the most serious attempt to assassinate a president or presidential candidate since President Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981. It was the latest in a series of security lapses by the agency that has drawn investigations and public scrutiny over the years.
Cheatle took over two years ago as head of the Secret Service’s 7,800 special agents, uniformed officers and other staffers whose main purpose is protecting presidents, vice presidents, their families, former presidents and others.
In announcing her appointment, Biden said Cheatle had served on his vice presidential detail and called her a ‘distinguished law enforcement professional with exceptional leadership skills’ who had his ‘complete trust.’
Cheatle took the reins from James M. Murray as multiple congressional committees and an internal watchdog investigated missing text messages from when Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
The Secret Service says they were purged during a technology transition.
