Senator JD Vance revealed Thursday that he could have been at the rally in Butler, Pennsylvania when former President Donald Trump was shot and shared his reaction to seeing the video of the assassination attempt.
The Ohio senator discussed the details surrounding his meeting with the former president at Mar-a-Lago about choosing him as his running mate during a podcast interview with Joe Rogan.
“He says, wouldn’t it really set the world on fire if we made the decision today?” Vance recalled. “And why don’t you come up with me and we’ll just make the announcement in Butler, Pennsylvania.”
Trump ultimately decided against the idea, Vance said, citing the need to do more preparation before the announcement.
If he hadn’t changed his mind, Vance and his family would have been in danger.
JD Vance on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast
Vance said he went back to Ohio and took his children to play mini-golf before hearing the news of the assassination attempt.
“I actually thought they killed him because when you first see the video, he grabs his ear and then he goes down,” he recalls.
Watching the video on his phone, Vance, a former Marine, said he rushed his children to his house and went into “fight or flight” mode.
“I picked up my kids, threw them in the car and went home, loaded all my guns and stood like a sentinel at our front door,” he said.
Joe Rogan hosts JD Vance on his podcast
Republican presidential candidate, former President Donald Trump, is helped off stage during a campaign event in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Vance was vague about the details surrounding the shooter, but expressed surprise that the shooter, Matthew Crooks, could get so close to the president without being spotted by the Secret Service.
“How did you get so close?” he asked. ‘I can shoot pretty well. I served in the Marine Corps for four years. An AR-15 from 400 feet is a bull’s-eye.”
Vance expressed surprise that Trump was not assassinated.
“It’s shocking that he’s still alive,” he said.
Vance also questioned the police’s inability to find a motive for the shooter, citing the lack of any manifesto.
‘We don’t know anything about the motive here, I think that’s the strangest thing. You know, I’m obviously motivated because he hates Donald Trump, but you don’t know anything about the secondary motive,” he concluded. “Man, it’s weird.”