A grateful Donald Trump was in Milwaukee on Monday to make final preparations for the Republican presidential nomination later this week after narrowly escaping an assassination attempt that he said presented an opportunity to bring the country together.
Trump, 78, was holding a campaign rally on Saturday in Butler, Pennsylvania – a key state in the Nov. 5 election – when a 20-year-old man with an AR-15-style rifle got close enough to shoot at the former Republican president from a rooftop.
One shot hit Trump’s upper right ear, leaving his face streaked with blood, but he was not severely wounded.
His campaign said he was doing fine.
“That reality is just setting in,” Trump told the Washington Examiner on Sunday. “I rarely look away from the crowd. Had I not done that in that moment, well, we would not be talking today, would we?”
One person in the crowd was killed and two others wounded before Secret Service agents fatally shot the suspect.
In their remarks on Sunday, both Trump and President Joe Biden counseled calm and unity, aiming to lower temperatures in a country whose deep political divide has grown even more pronounced during the presidential race.
Biden delivered a televised address from the Oval Office in the White House on Sunday.
“There is no place in America for this kind of violence, for any violence ever. Period. No exceptions,” “We can’t allow this violence to be normalized,” he said. “The political rhetoric in this country has gotten very heated. It’s time to cool it down.”
Trump pumped his fist in the air several times on Sunday as he descended the stairs from his plane after arriving in Milwaukee, where he will accept his party’s formal nomination at the Republican National Convention with a speech on Thursday.
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“This is a chance to bring the whole country, even the whole world, together. The speech will be a lot different, a lot different than it would’ve been two days ago,” Trump told the Washington Examiner.
“I want to try to unite our country,” the New York Post reported Trump saying during the same interview, conducted during the flight to Milwaukee. “But I don’t know if that’s possible. People are very divided.”
Biden, a Democrat, ordered a review of how the gunman, who was shot dead by agents moments after opening fire, could have taken up an elevated position so close to Trump, who as a former president has lifetime protection by the U.S. Secret Service.
Biden and Trump spoke to each other on Saturday night after the shooting.
First Lady Jill Biden also spoke with former First Lady Melania Trump on Sunday afternoon, said a White House official.
Trump and Biden are locked in a close election rematch, according to most opinion polls including by Reuters/Ipsos.
The shooting on Saturday whipsawed discussion around the presidential campaign, which had been focused on if Biden, 81, should drop out following a halting June 27 debate performance.
Source: Reuters
