Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump joined his pick for vice president, Ohio Sen. Senator J.D. Vance for a joint interview on Fox News.
In the interview, the former president recounted the harrowing attack on him by a would-be assassin named Thomas Crooks and the aftermath of the attack.
“I said, I’m telling you, I’m okay, I’m fine, I’m gonna get up, I wanna get up, I’m not gonna be taken out on a stretcher. We had a little argument, well, I have six guys lying on top of me, I mean, I had some big guys on top of me,” he said, remembering his argument with Secret Service agents.
“Strong guys too, I can tell you that by the wrist, the wrist had a little, little work on it. And brave guys, because they ran onto that stage very quickly. I was down for the most part, because when I looked at my hand, I knew it was, I knew it was something very serious,” the former president said.
“I put my hand up, I looked at it, it had blood all over it. But I had a lot of big, strong humans on top of me. And they were very brave humans, because they were running into fire, and he kept going. He probably thought he hit, but it hit the ear. And when I saw that, I got down pretty quickly, I think. I also think people were starting to shout. It’s one of the reasons I was able to go down so fast, because it almost is amazing that move of checking here and going almost immediately down. I think so, probably people were shouting at the same time. Who knows, it was bedlam,” he said.
“And I was down, and I said, let’s get going, come on, let’s go. And the shooting had stopped, so I assume they probably got him. They did get him. I believe they got him with one shot, one shot from an unbelievable shot. Now, if he would have done it earlier, maybe doing it early is hard, because it’s hard to shoot somebody when you’re not 100% sure,” the for president said.
“But they got him, and had they not gotten him, it could have been a lot worse situation. But two great men were very badly hurt. I’ve gotten to know them, and two, and one, Corey was, as you know, killed. And you could have had a lot more than that if he didn’t, but so they took him out,” he said, honoring the victims.
“So now we’re getting up. I said, I’m not lying in the stretcher, I’m not going to do that. So I forced my way up, and once I was up, I realized, because I looked, everybody was stunned. You know, we had thousands and thousands of people. A good group in the back, but they were great, you know, it was just like a backdrop. And nobody stampeded, nobody ran,” he said.
And he remembered the crowd response when he raised his fist for the photo that is now famous.
“Yeah, it was amazing, but it was love too. They didn’t they didn’t move. But when I came up they saw me come up and they thought it was over. 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. That was when they realized I was okay and it’s just an incredible country. It was a beautiful moment,” he said.