Donald Trump has made some laughable public comments about his second predicament, but for many of his loyal followers, the repeated attempts to take his life are deeply disturbing and enraging.
“Every stinking day something happens to him. When he got shot, I almost flipped out,” said Richard Moran, a retired Chrysler employee from Ortonville.
Moran said he was never interested in politics until Trump came along, and now he’s “all in with him.”
“I don’t understand it. They saw the kid walking around and they didn’t do anything,” he said of the first attempt on Trump’s life in Butler, Pennsylvania.
“If it was Biden, they would have been working on it,” he said. “But with Trump, they just let it go. It’s also damn serious. When Kennedy was assassinated, they were working on it the whole time. If he gets it, it’s no big deal.”
Moran came to a town hall speech Trump gave in Flint, which the candidate found “more fun” than a rally, with a cheering crowd and superficial questions from his former spokesman.
Terry Hoover said the attempts on Donald Trump’s life made her ‘angry’ and hoped it would give him a boost in protection
Days after his second brush with death, Trump spoke about how he nearly got shot in the head during the first attempt on his life and praised the eagle-eyed woman who helped authorities catch the suspect who set up a sniper’s nest on his Florida golf course.
He made several jokes about the incident Tuesday, at a heightened-security location where police blocked the road and a phalanx surrounded Trump as he walked through the crowd. “You know, only powerful presidents get shot at,” Trump said at one point.
But Terry Hoover, who runs an upholstery shop in Flint, said the second attempt made her “angry.”
“There are so many stupid people,” she said. “Hopefully he gets the protection he needs now.”
Trump and his campaign are using the attempts on his life as a rallying cry. Tuesday night in a packed arena in Flint, Arkansas, Governor Sarah Sanders linked the shooter to the “left” and prosecutors who have brought criminal cases against Trump.
Off-site, Jamie McNally of Frankenmouth brought three children, her husband and family members to the event, while another son is overseas in the Air Force.
“That’s crazy. It happened again. It didn’t stop me from coming out with my kids, or anyone else. We thought, no. We’re not going to let that deter us. No way. That’s what they want. And we’re not going to participate in that.”
Jamie McNally took her family to a Trump town hall and said threats against Trump won’t keep her away
“When he got shot, I almost got upset,” said Richard Moran, a retired Chrysler employee from Ortonville
Trump and other speakers at the rally called the assassination attempts
Former President Donald Trump said only “important” presidents get shot, highlighting what impressed him most about the response to the second assassination attempt on him
Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders led the town hall. “They have tried to impeach this president. They have tried to throw him in jail. And not once, but twice, two would-be assassins have tried to overthrow this president,” she told the crowd.
Her daughter wore a T-shirt to the event that read “You missed, b******.” A son wore a shirt that read “fight, fight, fight” – with a photo of Trump with his fist raised after the first assassination attempt.
Trump hasn’t just used the incidents for laughs. He’s also used them in fundraising appeals, and the campaign has made his defiant pose a defining image of its literature after the first attempt.
The former president also commented Tuesday on how the situation might have been different if a Secret Service officer, an alert bystander and the police had not acted as they did. “If that hadn’t been the case, I would be walking around saying, ‘I wonder where this guy is? Is he in this audience? We would have a maniac here,'” he said.
Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers, former House Intelligence Committee chairman and former FBI special agent, was also angry about the incident.
“It’s incompetence. Completely,” Rogers told DailyMail.com.
“You can’t leave a guy behind – put a long gun in the bushes where your Protectee is going to be. It’s not like he doesn’t play golf. I don’t think he does. That’s incompetence. I don’t know what’s going on there, but I thought it was an incompetent failure the first time. This looks like an incompetent failure the second time.”
President Joe Biden worn Genesee Countyincluding Flint, in 2020, by a margin of 54 to 45, winning the state. Trump only hinted at his false claims that he had won the state, saying that there was “a lot of love in this room” and that “we came in 2020 and did a lot better than we did in 2016.”
“But a lot has happened and we know what that is,” he said.
It’s an area where he could try to chip away at the margin as he faces Vice President Harris, with polls showing the state nearly tied.