Former US President Donald Trump on Monday said he refused to use the stretcher after being injured in the shooting at his rally in Pennsylvania. He was shot in the ear during an assassination attempt by 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13.
"Well, they wanted to put me on a stretcher. They had a stretcher and they wanted to put me on a stretcher, and I said I'm not going on a stretcher because I just felt it was the ear," Trump told Fox News.
"There was a lot of blood. But I understood. They thought I was hit elsewhere...I said, 'I'm telling you I'm OK, I'm fine. I'm going to get up. I want to get up. I'm not going to be taken out on a stretcher,'" he added.
Crooks opened fire on Trump with an AR-style assault rifle just minutes after the Republican US presidential candidate began speaking at the campaign event in Butler.
Crooks was perched on the roof of a nearby building with a clear sightline of the stage and was shot dead by a Secret Service sniper about 26 seconds after firing the first of eight shots.
A 50-year-old firefighter, Corey Comperatore, was shot dead in the shooting, while two other rally attendees were seriously injured.
Investigators have concluded that the 20-year-old, who lived in a town about 80 kilometers from Butler, acted alone.
Trump-Biden's Conversation
In his interview with Fox News, Donald Trump also spoke about his conversation with US President Joe Biden.
"You're lucky you turned to the right," Trump said Biden told him, referring to the head tilt half a second before the bullet, which was aimed at his head, grazed his right ear.
"I said, 'I think so'," he added, calling his chat with Biden a "nice conversation".
He also said the embattled Secret Service chief, Kimberly Cheatle, came to see him after the shooting. She is under fire after the Secret Service failed in its mission to prevent the assassination attempt on Trump.
"She came to see me. And, well, I mean, it went very nicely. She was very nice, I thought. But, you know, somebody should have made sure there was nobody on that roof," Trump told Fox News.
Cheatle served as a Secret Service agent for 27 years before leaving in 2021 to become the head of security in North America for PepsiCo. She was then named to head the agency by Biden in 2022.
