“Golf is a very dangerous game,” former President Donald Trump joked during a rare late-night talk show appearance on Wednesday, just days after the Secret Service thwarted a second assassination attempt on the Republican 2024 presidential candidate.
Trump, 78, laughed with his co-hosts on Fox News' “Gutfeld!” in a taped appearance hours before a raucous campaign rally on Long Island.
“So, Mr. P, how's your golf game going?” comedian Greg Gutfeld asked the former president.
“Well, I haven't really thought about it lately,” Trump responded. “I've always said golf is a very dangerous sport.”
“Especially if they're playing with you,” Gutfeld joked.
“Yes,” Trump said. “It's very sad.”
The 45th president escaped a second assassination attempt on Sunday when a Secret Service agent found a rifle barrel protruding from bushes along one hole at a golf course in Palm Beach, Florida, leaving Trump on the green a few hundred yards away from the shooter.
“If you had been told the shooter was there, would you have tried to shoot him down with a 3-wood?” Gutfeld later asked Trump.
“I think so,” Trump replied, “if I knew.”
“The Secret Service did a great job, actually,” he added. “They saw the barrel. It was a big gun. And it came out of the bushes. How many people saw that?”
“It's really remarkable that he was able to do that,” Trump said of the sharp-eyed agent.
“We've been through a lot,” he said of being targeted by assassination attempts in Butler and Palm Beach, Pa. “We've gotten pretty used to it, but we don't want to be too vocal about it.”
Asked how he was responding to the horrific attack, Mr Trump said he accepted that “being president is a very dangerous job”.
“For the president, 6% or 7% [get assassinated]” he pointed out.
The former president said that since the Butler shooting, he hasn't been thinking “about death,” but rather “about God.”
Trump also revealed his only regret about his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris earlier this month.
“I guess my only regret is that I didn't want to attack the anchors because I wanted to be classy. In some ways I wish I had,” he said, referring to ABC News anchors David Muir and Lindsey Davis, who fact-checked Harris' comments multiple times during the standoff but never corrected her.
In one anecdote, Trump recounted receiving a frantic phone call from Minnesota Governor Tim Walz after supporters of the then-president “surrounded” his home.
“He called me years ago, when I was in the White House, and he said, 'My house is surrounded by people with American flags,'” Trump alleged. “I said, 'Is that a good thing or a bad thing?' And he said, 'I think they're going to attack me.'”
“They're MAGA people,” Trump said of the group that harassed Harris' running mate.
“[Walz] “They said, 'Can you just say one word that I'm your friend?' I don't know him,” the former president continued. “And so, going all the way back… I made a statement: 'He's a good man. The governor is on our side.' I didn't know him, but I didn't want him to get hurt. And so we all took down our flags and walked out.”
“He said it was a miracle… I didn't want him to get hurt.”
Walz told Politico in 2021 that Trump “brought armed people into my house” and took responsibility for the incident. Tweet on April 17, 2020 “LIBERATE MINNESOTA,” the 45th president wrote under the slogan during the pandemic lockdown.
The governor acknowledged that he had called President Trump and asked for a “clarification” about the tweet.
On April 20, 2020, President Trump said: [Walz] He's from Minnesota and we're working closely together to make sure he gets everything he needs, and fast. Good things are happening!”
According to Fox News, Trump's appearance on the comedy show was taped in front of a live studio audience.
According to the outlet, the interview was Trump's first on a late-night broadcast or cable TV show during the election campaign since his appearance on NBC's “The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon” in 2016.
“Gutfeld!” draws more independents and Democrats than any other late-night show, newly released data showed. Nielsen MRI Fusion.
