White House chief of staff Susie Wiles said on Wednesday that she initially didn’t believe President Donald Trump survived the July 13, 2024, assassination attempt on his life, before he rose to his feet and raised his fist in the air.
Trump was shot and slightly wounded in the right ear in the assassination attempt during a campaign rally in Butler Township, Pennsylvania, that left former volunteer fire chief Corey Comperatore dead and two other attendees wounded. Wiles said during an interview on the “Pod Force One” podcast that Trump’s decision to ask for a chart and to turn his head when he did “just doesn’t happen because it happened.”
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“The way the — the rally itself unfolded, the chart he had them put up on the screens on the big LED boards, came, it was always the last chart in the rotation, and it was always on the other side,” Wiles told New York Post reporter Miranda Devine. “So to have him ask for that chart eight minutes in and to have it come on the side that is opposite caused him — well it’s this way — caused him to look in a different direction and lift his head just a little, because it was higher. And that just doesn’t happen because it happened. It happened because I believe God wanted him to live.”
Wiles described her thoughts as she witnessed the aftermath of the exchange of gunfire, during which a Secret Service sniper killed the would-be assassin, Thomas Michael Crooks. Trump fought to stand up and raised a fist, shouting “Fight!” before his Secret Service detail moved him from the stage.
“We were just crazy at the, the minute he was hit,” Wiles told Devine, who asked, “Did you think he was dead?”
“I did. You think the worst. You cannot, it’s human. You can’t, you can’t think otherwise. And when he stood up, I thought, ‘Oh my gosh,’” Wiles said. “And then they raced us to the cars and we went to the hospital and, and it was clear very soon that, that he was going to be okay. But it was a scary time and it changed everything for us.”
Then-Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned July 23, 2024, after receiving criticism over her testimony before the House Oversight Committee about the attempt and lapses in security at the Butler rally, including not having personnel on the roof Crooks fired the shots from.
Trump survived a second assassination attempt Sept. 25, 2024, when a Secret Service agent fired shots at a man armed with a semi-automatic rifle while Trump was playing a round of golf at the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida.
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