Following the assassination attempt at his rally in Pennsylvania, former President Donald Trump said Sunday that he believes he narrowly avoided his own death in a interview with The New York Post.
“I shouldn’t be here, I should be dead,” Trump told the Post on Sunday.
Trump spoke to the Post while en route to Milwaukee for the Republican National Convention this week; the former president reportedly had a large white bandage on his right ear from the wound he suffered in the shooting.
Trump recalled turning his head slightly to the right to read a graphic about undocumented immigrants during the rally — a split-second move that he believes allowed him to dodge a shot that would have killed him.
The alleged shooter was killed by the Secret Service shortly before its agents covered and guided Trump to safety.
Trump campaign senior adviser Jason Miller said Trump “feels very lucky” to be alive during an interview Monday on NBC’s “Today” show.
“And as he said, it is only by the grace of God that he is still with us. It is miraculous that President Trump turned his head just a little at the right time to avoid the bullet,” Miller said. “And the message that President Trump is getting out of this is very simple: We have to unite America. We have to unite the country.”
In his interview with The Post, Trump said he had initially prepared an “extremely harsh” RNC speech about Biden’s “corrupt and horrible” administration, but that he “threw it out” in the wake of the assassination attempt.
The former president reportedly said he is working on a new speech because “I want to try to unite our country,” adding “but I don’t know if that’s possible. People are very divided.”
Asked by host Savannah Guthrie on the “Today” show if he expects a different tone from Trump going forward, Miller pointed to Trump’s attitude. publish on his social media site Truth Social on Sunday, urging the need to be “resilient in our faith and defiant in the face of evil.”
“This is a moment in our country’s history where we are on a tinderbox,” Miller said. “There is a lot of political division.”
“The disunity and unrest that is happening nationally is simply not good for the country,” he added. “This cannot persist. We have to come together at this time.”
This story originally appeared on NBCNews.com read the full story
