Former President Donald Trump reflected on how concerned his youngest son was when he found out about his father’s near-death encounter at a Pennsylvania rally.
Donald Trump had been speaking to supporters at the rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July when gunfire shots were heard, with at least one of the bullets skimming the former president’s ear before Secret Service members surrounded him. Donald Trump’s wife, former first lady Melania Trump, had been watching the rally on television when the shooting occurred, during which Barron Trump, their son, was in the middle of a tennis lesson.
“He’s a good tennis player, he’s outside playing tennis, and somebody ran up ‘Barron, Barron, your father’s been shot,’” Donald Trump said on Fox News’s Life, Liberty, and Levin. “You know, he loves his father. He’s a good kid, good student, good athlete, actually. And he ran, ‘Mom, what’s going on, what’s going on?’ She couldn’t believe it. She was actually watching it live, can you imagine?”
The former president added that it was “a miracle” he survived the shooting, as the shot fired at him should have been “a sure thing.” Donald Trump Jr., the oldest of the Trump children, who the former president said is “great” with guns, contacted his father after the shooting, telling him he could not believe his father was not dead.
Donald Trump also credited God for saving his life from the shooting, stating that he knows of people who have become believers in God since the historic event.
Since the shooting, various investigations have been started to look into the failures of the rally’s security. The FBI revealed Wednesday that Trump’s would-be assassin, who has been identified as Thomas Matthew Crooks, conducted multiple online searches related to Trump’s campaign events months before the shooting.
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The FBI also unveiled crime scene photos on Wednesday, including images of Crooks’s gun, book bag, the air conditioning unit that the FBI believes Crooks used to hoist himself onto a roof at the rally, and two of the improvised explosive devices Crooks made and stored in his vehicle.
In the wake of the shooting, the Secret Service told the Washington Examiner that an unspecified number of agents were put on desk duty, walking back its earlier statement that agents were put on leave and not allowed to return to work. A source familiar with the matter told news organizations that five people were placed on leave: one person from Trump’s personal protective team and four from the Pittsburgh field office, including the special agent in charge.
