Donald Trump might not have been preparing to accept the Republican nomination in Milwaukee this week if he hadn’t looked at a chart of immigration statistics during his now-infamous rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, last Saturday.
Seconds after the ex-president turned away from the stage, crazed gunman Thomas Crooks, 20, opened fire, wounding Trump in the ear and killing retired Fire Chief Corey Comperatore, 50.
Texas Rep. Ronny Jackson, who was Trump’s former physician, was quoted by The New York Times as saying that Trump believes speaking out about the crisis at the southern border saved his life.
“He said, ‘The Border Patrol saved my life.’ He said, ‘If I hadn’t pointed at that map and turned my head to look at it, that bullet would have hit me right in the head.’”
Crooks was quickly shot dead by Secret Service snipers, but questions remain about the agency’s security protocols after the shooting.
A shocking new animation shows how close Trump came to death when the bullet passed his brain and hit his ear.
Because so many questions remain about the shooting, including Crooks’ exact location, this illustration is based on what is known at this time.
A new animation shows Donald Trump turning his head at just the right moment to avoid being fatally injured
The bullet fired by insane gunman Thomas Crooks passed through the president’s brain and hit his ear
Trump blames turning to point at a graph on turning his head at the right time
“I shouldn’t be here, I should be dead,” Trump said
Only Trump’s ear was damaged.
“I shouldn’t be here, I should be dead. By luck or by God, a lot of people say by God, I’m still here,” Trump later told his local newspaper The New York Post.
Trump praised the Secret Service for the way it handled the evacuation, telling the Post that it had done a “fantastic job.”
“It’s surreal for all of us,” he added.
A veteran of the Israeli Special Operations, Aaron Cohen, echoed this position in an interview with Fox news.
“Snipers are typically trained to target the cerebellar cortex, at the top of the brain stem,” he said.
“It paralyzes you, it makes your hands immobile. … It’s the distance of the shot. A hundred and thirty yards. That’s a putt. Anybody can put a two, two, three, optic on a target that distance away and hit it. It’s not a hard shot to make.”
“The fact that he happened to be turned this way when that shot came in saved his life,” Cohen added.
Meanwhile, Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle has been criticized for her “stupidity” and “bullshit excuse” that there were no snipers on the roof used by would-be assassin Thomas Crooks because it was “too slanted.”
Cheatle told ABC News on Tuesday that there were no officers on the sloping building because he considered it too dangerous. However, footage from the scene did show Secret Service snipers on a sloping roof behind where Trump gave his speech.
Former Army Ranger Sean Powell was among those who expressed his anger over Cheatle’s “BS excuse” in an angry tweet.
“Holy shit. A slanted roof? That’s a total BS excuse,” he wrote.
“Our snipers used to go up on mountain tops in Afghanistan. On the slopes if they had to. The stupidity of that statement explains so much of why the s*** hit the fan that day. Absolute incompetence,” he added.
Rep. Ronny Jackson of Texas quoted Trump as noting how pointing to an immigration card likely saved his life
Trump was shot in the ear about 10 minutes after he took the stage
Cheatle’s claims were heavily criticized when it was noted that the snipers positioned on the left building were also positioned on a sloped roof, behind Trump’s podium, while Crooks was on the right building
The motives of deranged gunman Thomas Crooks are still being investigated by authorities
After Cheatle’s bizarre comments, former South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint also joined the debate: “This sad excuse defies all credibility.”
While former Secret Service agent Dan Bongino claimed that Thomas Crooks’ vantage point would be covered, no one showed up. Meanwhile, the agency’s director, Kimberly Cheatle, was criticized for her “bullshit excuse” that the roof was “too slanted” for snipers.
The political TV and radio commentator, who worked as a police officer for more than a decade, told Donald Trump Jr.’s Triggered podcast on Tuesday that the rooftop where Thomas Crooks tried to assassinate the former president should have been occupied by police.
‘According to my source, that roof is supposed to be a police station… [there] “Someone really should have been there,” Bongino said from the Republican Party convention in Milwaukee.