In a recent interview, Donald Trump revealed how, in a devastating way, Melania Trump witnessed the attempt on his life on live television.
On July 13, 20-year-old Thomas
Laura Ingraham questioned him about how his wife, Melania, handled the stressful day at home.
“She was watching,” he said. “She was watching live. It was all over the place. It was on television.”
Trump continued, saying that although he can view it as evidence that his wife genuinely cares for him, she is unwilling to even talk to him about that awful day.
“She can’t even really talk about it. That’s okay, that means she likes me. She loves me. She could talk about it freely; I’m not sure which is better. She either likes or loves me, that’s nice.”
Given how the Secret Service had brought him down, Melania thought ‘the worst had happened’ as she saw the shooting in real time.
Trump kept feeling sorry for the Secret Service operatives who let him down in the end.
“I just want to say one thing about Secret Service… they were very brave. They were coming. Bullets were flying over me. I went down and they were on top of me, I had a lot of very big, strong people on top of me.”
Trump has stated this often, but he also acknowledged that he knew why things had gone wrong on that fateful day.
How about the Trump supporters who were yelling about him? “There should have been someone on the roof, communicating with the local police, and we’re seeing this guy, who was a very disturbed person.”
Matthew Crooks attempted to assassinate Trump, but he miraculously lived.
“But it should’ve happened nine seconds earlier,” Trump continued, praising the work of the Secret Service countersniper who killed Crooks.
He went on to say that he will be giving a “victim statement” to the FBI on Thursday.
In a group conversation, people tasked with Trump’s protection knew that, contrary to the FBI’s earlier allegation that Trump was shot within an hour, gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, had been among them for more than ninety minutes.
When one of the three countersnipers was about to call off at the end of their shift at around 4:26pm, they noticed a man who they later confirmed to be Crooks sitting on a picnic table.
It turned out that on the day of the shooting, the father of the gunman called the police because Crooks failed to return from what he believed to be a typical Saturday excursion to the nearby gun range.
Furthermore, it was disclosed that Crooks attended the former president’s rally three hours before to launching his shooting spree. The Secret Service had suspicions about Crooks at the time because he was carrying a rangefinder, which hunters use to take long shots.
He was never questioned or stopped, though.
Afterwards, he scaled the building’s roof to kill former volunteer fire chief Corey Comperatore and shoot Trump.
Crooks delivered his coworkers a final, terrifying message on Saturday by informing his supervisor that he needed the day off from work and that he would return on Sunday.
FBI Director Christopher Wray revealed in startling testimony to Congress earlier this week that the shooter looked up “how far” Lee Harvey Oswald was from John F. Kennedy online before shooting him.
Two hours before he opened fire in Butler, Pennsylvania, the 20-year-old gunman flew a drone 200 yards from the stage, and three explosives were found in his car, FBI Director Christopher Wray also said to senators.
At a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, Trump narrowly escaped an attempted assassination, and the Secret Service immediately led him off stage.
The Secret Service countersniper who shot and killed Crooks was acting alone, according to the FBI.
Amid growing concerns over her handling of the massive security lapses at the event, Kimberly Cheatle resigned from her position as director of the agency on Tuesday.
During her Monday appearance before Congress, Cheatle faced criticism from both Democrats and Republicans, for which she accepted responsibility for the disastrous mistakes.
In a startling revelation, Cheatle said on Monday that her ground operatives had received between two and five warnings that a “suspicious person” had been reported prior to Trump’s arrival.
Questions over why an agent was not stationed on the roof where Crooks fired at the former president and why Trump was permitted to enter the stage even after a threat was identified had begun to mount for the security chief.