Former President Donald Trump vowed on Monday to continue holding outdoor rallies despite the recent assassination attempt on him, with Trump revealing that his wife, Melania, was “watching live.”
“Yes, I’m going to a meeting. [outside]Trump, 78, made the remarks to Fox News host Laura Ingraham when asked whether he would hold any future outdoor events in the wake of the July 13 shooting at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
The Secret Service has reportedly urged former President Trump’s campaign to refrain from holding outdoor events due to safety concerns – all of Trump’s campaign events have been held indoors since the assassination attempt.
“I think it’s symbolically important,” the Republican presidential candidate said of his upcoming return to the town where the assassination attempt took place.
“I don’t think we should be stopped by someone who has serious mental issues or any other issues,” Trump added.
President Trump, whose ear was grazed by a bullet fired by 20-year-old suspect Thomas Matthew Crooks at the Butler rally, said the former first lady watched the horrific shooting on television while it was happening and thought “the worst had happened.”
“She was watching it live,” the former president said.
“She can’t even talk about it, but that’s okay,” Trump said, adding, “It means she likes me.”
“When I fell, she thought the worst had happened,” the 45th president said of First Lady Melania Trump’s immediate reaction, “because when I fell and I grabbed my hands, they were covered in blood.”
Crooks was shot and killed by a Secret Service sniper shortly after injuring President Trump, seriously wounding two other rally attendees and killing one.
The Secret Service has been accused of not guarding the roof of the building where Crooks was able to climb before opening fire on Trump, and is under investigation for failing to locate agents there despite being warned about an assassin before Trump spoke.
“They should have been in touch with local law enforcement, but they weren’t,” Trump said of the Secret Service. “So that’s bad. They had sightings of this guy, a very mentally ill individual, and they had sightings of him in the vicinity.”
President Trump also said the victim would be interviewed by the FBI on Thursday.
Victim interviews are a typical and optional aspect of the FBI’s investigative procedures, in which the FBI seeks to obtain the victim’s perspective on the crime that occurred.
Trump has criticised FBI Director Christopher Wray, who suggested in congressional testimony last week that it may have been “shrapnel” rather than a bullet that sliced off Trump’s ear.
The FBI later released a statement confirming that Trump had indeed been shot.
The former president also said radical Supreme Court reforms proposed by President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are “going nowhere” and vowed to make no changes to the nation’s highest court if elected.
The Biden-Harris proposal includes passing legislation limiting Supreme Court justices’ terms to 18 years, requiring judges to disclose gifts, avoid public political activity and resign if they or their spouses have a conflict of interest, and a new constitutional amendment to limit presidential immunity.
Trump called the proposal “a classic Biden scam.”
“He doesn’t want to give up immunity because without it, you look at everything he’s done, the $3.5 million from Russia, all the money he took from China, all the bad, evil things he’s done and the thousands of people who’ve been killed on the border,” Trump told Ingraham.
“If I were president, that wouldn’t happen. I would maintain the status quo. It’s worked very well for a long time,” he said of the Supreme Court.
