Former President Donald Trump said it was important for him to return to Butler, Pennsylvania — the site of the first assassination attempt on his life.
“No, I’m not scared,” Trump said on “Flagrant” podcast with comedian Andrew Schulz when asked if he was “scared” to return to Butler, the Daily Wire reported.
“I sort of have an attitude, it is what it is,” he added. “You do what you have to do. I felt it was important to go back.”
Trump was in the western Pennsylvania town on July 13 when he was grazed by a bullet. Two members of the audience was also hit by gunfire and one attendee died that day.
He returned to the exact location on Saturday.
Trump said he was not alone in him wanting to return to Butler.
“A lot of people agreed with me,” he said. He pointed out the turnout and even joked that a person doesn’t usually get that big of a turnout without some kind of musical skills.
“And I had no guitar. If you have a guitar, it’s easy,” Trump said, adding the crowd went “crazy” when he took the stage and said, “As I was saying.”
“So, we were at a very serious and somber [event], because we were celebrating a life that is no longer with us, and I wasn’t sure … I wanted to actually finish my speech,” Trump said. “When I got up [after being shot at], I said, ‘Let me finish my speech.’”
Trump also talked about how he felt right after he was shot.
“You know, when I went down it was sort of like, embarrassed, I said, ‘I went down in front of all these people, I don’t want to be embarrassed,’” he said.
The Republican presidential nominee also said what happened could not be described as “surreal” as he was cognizant of what happened.
Trump was asked many times who he believes are behind the assassination attempts. Another attempt was stunted when a gunman aimed a rifle at Trump when he was playing golf in Florida.
“You would look at Iran. Iran has an open threat out for me,” Trump said. “And Biden, if he were a real president … should say, ‘Anybody shoots a former president … we will bomb that country into oblivion.’”
“And it would stop,” he said. “There have been people who have been threatened in another party, even … what you have to inform those people is, if they do it, [their] country will be blown to smithereens … and those threats go away.”
Trump took issue with a New York Times headline — “Trump’s Speeches, Increasingly Angry and Rambling, Reignite the Question of Age.”
Trump explained how he makes the speeches he makes.
“You know, I do a thing called the weave,” Trump said. “And there are those who say, ‘Oh this guy is so genius.’ Others who say, ‘Oh he rambles.’”
“I don’t ramble,” the Republican presidential nominee said. “What you do, you weave things in. … You need to have an extraordinary memory because you have to come back where you started from. I can go so far here or there. And I can come back to exactly where I started.”
