- Trump, Jr. was interviewed extensively several days after the shooting
- He was fishing with his daughter when he found out
Donald Trump, Jr. has revealed the “awkward moment” he was left unaware of his father’s health after a would-be assassin shot him, and the lighthearted jokes they exchanged to break the tension.
The president’s eldest son reenacted part of their first conversation after the gunman shot the former president in Pennsylvania. The conversation finally put an end to the uncertainty and also included some father-son banter.
“Can I call you Evander Holyfield because of the missing piece of your ear?” he told his father, who organizes boxing matches.
Don Jr. even did a respectable Trump imitation when he described how they broke the tension with humor in an interview with Axios outside the Republican convention.
“Most importantly, how’s the hair?” he asked his father. “The hair’s fine, Don. The hair’s fine. There’s a lot of blood in it, but it’s fine,” he said, his father replied.
Those jokes obscure the horrors endured by Trump Jr. and his family members — and the serious security questions he demands U.S. agencies answer about what went wrong.
Donald Trump, Jr. says he didn’t know his father’s condition during ‘tough time’, and spoke about the jokes they shared after he was shot
He said he was fishing with his daughter in Jupiter, Florida, when he first heard the news.
“It took me 90 minutes to even know he was alive. That was a difficult moment,” he said.
“I’ll never forget it. Those were some tough hours,” he shared.
“I don’t want to be the guy — I’m not going to bring up conspiracies. But these are just facts that I can’t reconcile in any way,” he said, demanding to know how a gunman could stay on a roof and shoot his father at a rally in Pennsylvania.
Donald Trump, Jr. spoke about the ‘difficult moment’ when he heard his father had been shot
He said he did not want to promote “conspiracies” but questioned how a gunman could get within 500 feet of the president and fire multiple shots.
He raised the idea that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. could get a job in a second Trump administration after a leaked video showed Trump expressing skepticism about vaccines in a phone call with him
Trump, Jr. had pushed his father to choose Senator J.D. Vance as his running mate
“I’ve worked with a Secret Service unit myself and I’ve seen what they do … a guy doesn’t stand on a roof with a gun where there are people … and say for five minutes, here’s a guy on a roof with a gun,” he told interviewer Mike Allen.
He was accompanied by his own security guards at an event where guests’ bags were checked.
He said he was astonished at how the breach could have occurred.
“That’s not going to happen,” he said. “That’s not going to happen without a serious breach of something. It’s impossible,” said Trump Jr., an avid hunter who compared a shot from within 150 yards to a gimme golf shot.
“That’s like a 6-inch putt for a shooter. That doesn’t happen. That doesn’t happen,” he said.
He says he didn’t learn of his father’s choice of JD Vance as his running mate until everyone else did, despite the fact that he himself was one of the biggest backers of that choice.
“I had been feeling it for a while. I knew for sure when I saw Truth go out. I found out the way the rest of the world usually did – on social media,” he revealed.
“I think it took longer than it needed to,” he said of the process.
He also spoke about a possible endorsement of Robert Kennedy, Jr., on a day when a video leaked of the former president trying to appease him by expressing skepticism about vaccines.
“Maybe that’s one of those moments that brings people together,” he said, pointing to Kennedy’s family history. “Maybe there’s a place for him in an administration somewhere,” he said.