Eric Trump said he was watching TV with his young children when he witnessed the assassination attempt on his father, former President Donald Trump, and that he “just couldn’t believe” what he saw on screen.
Eric, 40, Interview with NBC’s Savannah Guthrie On Monday night, President Trump and his supporters gathered at the Republican National Convention just 48 hours after that close call.
“Two days ago, I was sitting on the couch with my kids and watching their dad get nearly assassinated on national television,” Eric said, describing the moment he saw gunshots ring out at a Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday evening.
Eric Trump has two children, a 6-year-old son, Luke, and a 4-year-old daughter, Carolina, with his wife, Lara Trump, co-chair of the Republican National Committee.
“I saw it live… I clearly heard the shots, I heard the gunfire and my eyes immediately went to the TV and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing,” he added.
“You see the blood right away, you see someone on the ground right away and you don’t know if they’ve been shot multiple times so you just pray to God that they’ll get up.”
The attempted assassin, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, fired several shots from an AR-style rifle about 130 yards from the podium where the 78-year-old Trump was speaking.
One bullet grazed the former president’s ear but narrowly missed the side of his skull.
“His ears hurt badly, to say the least,” Eric said of his father’s injuries.
“At least I knew he was still able to move at that point,” he added, saying that seconds after the bullets flew, he saw his father, covered in blood, stand up and pump his fist in the air.
“It’s not a happy moment,” he lamented. “This should not happen in this country.”
Eric said his father had insisted on attending the Republican National Convention as planned, despite the trauma of the shooting that left one rally attendee dead and two seriously injured.
“I spoke to him 45 minutes after the shooting and he said, ‘Nothing’s going to change at the tournament, I’m going,'” he recalled.
Trump had initially planned to postpone his trip to key battleground states in the wake of the assassination attempt, but announced Sunday he was abandoning the postponement.
“I cannot allow a ‘gun slayer’ or potential assassin to force schedule or other changes,” the former president wrote to Truth Social.
On Monday night, Eric Trump cast his vote to officially name his father the Republican nominee in November’s election.
Trump won 2,387 of the 2,429 nominating delegates in a roll call vote, well above the 1,215 he needed to clinch his candidacy.
Trump addressed the crowd at the convention with his right ear bandaged.
Eric and his brother Donald Jr., 46, were on hand to welcome their father and newly appointed vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance.
However, conspicuously absent from the Trump camp were former First Lady Melania Trump, Trump’s youngest son Barron, and his daughter Ivanka.
