Former President Donald Trump, addressing a crowd in Flint, Michigan, on Tuesday, implied that multiple assassination attempts against him were a result of the significant impact of his presidency. He argued that only presidents who make a substantial difference face such threats.
“You know, only consequential presidents get shot at,” Trump asserted during a town hall event, referring to the fact that the Secret Service had recently thwarted a second assassination attempt against him in two months.
“The endeavor of running for president is fraught with peril,” Trump remarked to Arkansas Governor Sarah Sanders, who moderated the discussion.
“Being president brings its own risks,” he continued. “People think race car driving is risky—no. They think bull riding is perilous—no. This job is dangerous, and it’s crucial that we ensure it remains secure.”
“God is not done with President Trump,” affirmed Sanders, who previously served as his White House Press Secretary.
“He’s the toughest guy I know and the fighter our country most desperately needs right now,” she added.
Trump mentioned a “pleasant conversation” with President Biden and received a “very, very nice” phone call from Vice President Kamala Harris following the recent scare at his West Palm Beach golf club.
Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, was apprehended and charged with federal firearm offenses after allegedly hiding in the bushes near Trump’s golf course with an AK-47 rifle.
“These guys do a great job,” Trump commented about the Secret Service’s handling of the situation. “Now – they do need more people. And they’ve been complaining about that for a long time. But they did a great job.”
“This guy was all set to do his number,” Trump said of Routh, describing his setup outside the golf course as “sophisticated.”
Trump also praised the woman who followed Routh and recorded his license plate number, which enabled law enforcement to quickly apprehend him.
“See, women are smarter than men,” Trump said of the observant woman, adding, “I’d like to meet her. I’m going to meet her, I hope.”
On policy issues, Trump criticized the move by Chinese automakers to establish factories in Mexico, seemingly to avoid tariffs and import electric vehicles into the United States.
“They’re owned and built by China in Mexico, and there are a number of them going up right now,” he said of the car manufacturing plants south of the border.
“They think they’re going to make their cars there, and they’re going to sell them across our line, and we’re going to take them and we’re not going to charge them tax – we’re going to charge them,” Trump promised.
“I’m telling you right now, I’m putting a 200% tariff on, which means they’re unsellable, unsellable in the United States,” he added.
“And then you wonder why I get shot at, right?” Trump joked.
“When I say something like that, you have countries saying, ‘This guy,’ but what can you do?” he contended. “You have to do what you have to do, right? We have to be brave. Otherwise, we’re not going to have a country left.”
Trump is among the 15 U.S. presidents who have survived assassination attempts. Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy were assassinated while in office, after having narrowly avoided earlier attempts on their lives.
Former President Andrew Jackson survived an assassination attempt in 1835 at the U.S. Capitol when the attacker’s gun misfired.
Former Presidents Gerald Ford and Franklin Roosevelt were shot at close range by would-be assassins, who missed their targets.
During the presidencies of Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton, shooters fired at the White House, and in 1994, a disturbed individual even crashed a small plane onto the South Lawn in an unsuccessful attempt to kill Clinton.
Former Presidents Ronald Reagan and Theodore Roosevelt, who was also on the campaign trail at the time, were struck by bullets but survived.
Former Presidents Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Harry S. Truman, and Herbert Hoover also had assassination attempts thwarted before they could be executed.
In a Fox News segment that aired after the Flint town hall, Trump acknowledged the criticism aimed at the Secret Service and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas following the two recent assassination attempts. However, he expressed satisfaction with the Secret Service’s performance in this particular case.
“In this case, it was something that worked out very well,” he said.
When questioned about whether the Secret Service should have secured the golf course’s perimeter before his outing, Trump said, “I can’t say.”
“I just said, ‘Let’s go play a quick round,’” he told Fox News host Sean Hannity, “because it’s all business for me.”
“It’s my only little bit of a form of exercise,” he said of his passion for golf, arguing that presidents and candidates should be able to pursue their activities safely.
“But Butler is a very different story,” Trump remarked about the first assassination attempt. “You know, somebody should have been on that building, and that’s a different story.”
Trump noted that his campaign has consistently requested additional Secret Service agents at events, and he anticipates that this will be addressed moving forward.
“That’s the weakness, if, if there’s a weakness,” he said regarding the apparent shortage of Secret Service personnel at his rallies.
“We’ve long requested more people … I will say, in Butler, we wanted more people. I heard them say it, you know, ‘We need more people here for security,’ and we never seem to get that. And I think we are getting it now,” Trump said. “Somebody told me that they will be providing more people now.”
{Matzav.com}
