Donald Trump returned to the site of his near-assassination in Butler, Pennsylvania for a rally on Saturday night and discussed the moment he was grazed by a bullet in detail.
After a memorial to Corey Comperatore, the rally attendee who was killed when 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks opened fire on the rally in July, Trump rolled out some purple language about the “harrowing” moment.
“For 16 harrowing seconds during the gunfire, time stopped as this vicious monster unleashed pure evil from his sniper’s perch, not so far away,” Trump told the crowd.
The former president trotted out a now-familiar line: that God had intervened to save his life during the shooting.
“By the hand of providence and the grace of God, that villain did not succeed in his goal,” Trump said. “Did not come close. He did not stop our movement. He did not break our spirit.”
Crooks, a registered Republican, was killed by return gunfire. Trump praised the Secret Service agents who protected him with their bodies immediately after the gunfire began.
“They were on top of me so fast, and there was not even a moment of doubt in their minds,” Trump said.
In the weeks since, the head of the Secret Service has resigned and the agency released a report that admitted to multiple failures during the first rally in Butler. Trump’s injury during the shooting inspired a Vietnam veteran to gift the former president his Purple Heart during a rally on Friday. The vet, identified only as Dwight, said that he was moved by Trump’s reaction in the moment — when he returned to the microphone to say “fight, fight” with agents draped on him — and that he could think of no one more deserving.
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