Trump Talks Assassination Attempt, Pays Tribute to Comperatore

On the final night of the Republican National Convention, former President Donald Trump gave a first-hand account of the attempted shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania, days earlier, in a speech that emphasized the potential for the shooting to impact the next four months of his campaign.

“I’m going to tell you exactly what happened, and you’ll never hear it from me again because it’s too painful to talk about,” Trump told thousands of ardent supporters gathered at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee and millions of viewers across the country.

Speakers during the four-day convention frequently mentioned Saturday’s shooting, which was the first assassination attempt on a president or presidential candidate since 1981, when Ronald Reagan was shot dead in Washington.

Nearly every convention speech noted Trump’s brush with death and praised his safety as divine intervention, which has already energized a throng of supporters in Milwaukee.

For the first 15 minutes of Trump’s speech Thursday, he gave an introspective speech about those 90 seconds. Then, the next hour became a more standard rally speech. The entire speech lasted more than 90 minutes.

Trump told the audience how he turned around to reference a chart about crossing borders while on stage and heard a noisy whooshing sound when he “felt something hit me, really, really hard in the ear. I said to myself, wow, what was that?”

“I knew immediately that the situation was serious, that we were under attack, and in one movement I fell to the ground.”

He called the Secret Service agents “very brave,” saying they “ran to the scene” and called them “wonderful people at great risk.”

“There was bloodshed, and yet in a way I felt safe because I had God on my side,” he said.

At one point he told the crowd he shouldn’t be there, his voice almost a whisper.

Thousands of people chanted, “Yes, you are!”

Trump has always been a politician who knows how to craft political moments. His defiant fist clenching on Saturday demonstrated that, as did his theatrical entrance on Thursday.

Before Trump took the stage, two people showed off a firefighter’s jacket and helmet with the number 27 on it. Both items belonged to Corey Comperatore, who was shot and killed at a Trump rally on Saturday.

trump card took the stage as Lee Greenwood sang “God Bless the USA” live.

At one point, Trump approached to kiss Comperatore’s helmet. He told the crowd that his campaign had raised more than $6 million for Comperatore’s family and the families of two rally goers seriously injured in the shooting, David Dutch and James Copenhaver. He called all three “serious Trump supporters.”

Trump said he spoke with Comperatore’s wife and called him a “highly respected former fire chief.”

“He lost his life acting selflessly as a human shield, protecting them from flying bullets,” Trump said. “He flew over them and got hit. What a great man he was.”

The former president asked for a moment of silence for Comperatore.

“There is no greater love than laying down one’s life for another,” Trump said. “It is the spirit that shaped America in its darkest hours, and it is the love that will lead America back to the pinnacle of human achievement and greatness. This is what we need. Despite such a heinous attack, we stand together tonight, more determined than ever. I am more determined than ever, and so are you. So is everyone.”

The rest of the speech sounded more or less like a standard Trump rally speech — full of jokes, exaggerations and little restraint, though delivered in a tranquil, monotonous tone.

As he began talking about illegal immigration, the table he had referred to in Butler appeared on the screens behind him.

“The last time they put that chart up, I didn’t get a chance to look at it,” he said with a laugh. “But without that chart, I wouldn’t be here today.”