Former President Donald Trump vowed Monday that he will continue to hold outdoor rallies despite the recent assassination attempt against him, which he revealed his wife, Melania, was “watching live.”
“Yeah, I’m going to do rallies [outside],” Trump, 78, told Fox News host Laura Ingraham when asked if he would be holding future outdoor events in light of the July 13 shooting at his Butler, Pa., campaign rally.
The Secret Service has reportedly encouraged the former president’s campaign to no longer host outdoor events over security concerns. All of Trump’s campaign events since the assassination attempt have been held indoors.
“I think it’s important symbolically,” the Republican nominee for president said of his upcoming return to the town where the assassination attempt took place.
“I don’t think we should be stopped by somebody that has severe mental problems or whatever his problem was,” Trump added.
Trump, who was grazed in the ear at the Butler rally by a bullet fired by 20-year-old Matthew Thomas Crooks, noted that the former first lady was watching the event on television as the horrifying shooting unfolded and thought “the worst had happened.”
“She was watching live,” the former president said.
“She can’t really even talk about it, which is OK,” Trump said, adding, “That means she likes me.”
“When I went down, she thought the worst had happened,” the 45th president said of Melania’s immediate reaction, “because I went down and grabbed my hand and my hand was loaded up with blood.”
Crooks was shot and killed by a Secret Service sniper moments after he wounded Trump, critically injured two rally-goers and killed one attendee.
The Secret Service has come under fire for not guarding the roof of the building which Crooks was able to scale before he aimed at Trump and opened fire. The federal agency has also faced scrutiny for losing track of the would-be assassin’s whereabouts despite being warned about him before Trump took the stage.
“There should have been communication with the local police, which there wasn’t,” Trump said of the Secret Service. “So that’s a bad thing, and they were seeing this guy – it was a very disturbed person, and they were seeing him around.”
Trump also revealed that his victim interview with the FBI will take place on Thursday.
The victim interview is a typical and voluntary aspect of the FBI’s investigatory procedures where the bureau attempts to get the victim’s perspective on the crime that transpired.
Trump has been critical of FBI Director Christopher Wray for suggesting in congressional testimony last week that “shrapnel” may have clipped his ear rather than a whole bullet.
The FBI later released a statement confirming Trump was in fact struck by an actual bullet.
The former president also said the radical Supreme Court reforms proposed by President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are “going nowhere” and vowed to not to make changes at the nation’s high court if elected.
The Biden-Harris proposals include passing legislation that would impose an 18-year term limit for Supreme Court justices; requirements that justices disclose gifts, avoid public political activity and recuse themselves if they or their spouses have conflicts of interests; and a new constitutional amendment that would limit presidential immunity.
“It’s a typical Biden con,” Trump said of the proposals.
“He doesn’t want to give up immunity, because if he didn’t have immunity – look at all the things he did, the three and a half million dollars from Russia. All the money he’s taken in from China, all of the bad things and the evil things he’s done, not to mention that thousands of people killed at the border,” Trump told Ingraham.
“I’ll tell you if, if I’m president, it doesn’t happen. We keep it the way it is. It’s been working very well for a long period of time,” he said of the Supreme Court.