Being president is a ‘dangerous job,’ Donald Trump told a Michigan crowd of supporters Tuesday night, saying to cheering supporters the attempt on his life only proved he mattered.
‘You know, only consequential presidents get shot at,’ Trump said at a town hall in Flint where he spoke at length about the dramatic incident.
It was one of several light-hearted comments he sprinkled into his remarks, while pointing to the danger that comes with his public profile. After a pair of assassination attempts, he compared the job to high risk occupations like race car driver and bull riding.
‘What can you do? 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 said.
Trump then offered a detailed account of the attempt on his life, just as he spoke about the first assassination attempt at the Republican convention. This time, there was no impact to speak of.
The former president praised the agent who fired on suspect Ryan Routh, who had been hiding in shrubbery in an AK-47 at Trump’s golf course in West Palm Beach.
‘There was no talk. He didn’t say: hello what are you doing here please? He took his gun and started shooting him,’ Trump said approvingly.
He also heaped praise on the eagle-eyed woman who snapped photos of the suspect’s getaway car.
Former President Doanld Trump said only ‘consequential’ presidents get shot at, and stressed what most impressed him about the response to the second assassination attempt against him
Trump says assassination attempts are because he’s ‘consequential’
If it weren’t for that, ‘I’d be walking around saying I wonder where this guy is? Is he in this audience? We would have a maniac out here,’ Trump said.
Do you think this incident will affect Trump’s popularity and campaign?
Instead, authorities were able to apprehend the suspect within minutes of when he fled the scene.
Trump also made light of the attempt on his life when saying he would slap 200 percent tariffs on Mexican car imports amid Chinese investment – this time saying it was his policies that made him a target. ‘And then you wonder why it gets shot at, right?’ he said.
The life and death banter was the most dramatic part of a town hall event where the former president appeared to confuse the Bagram air base in Afghanistan with a national oil refuge in Alaska. ‘We have Bagram in Alaska,’ Trump said, mixing up what he calls two chief Biden administration failures.
At a time when the Secret Service is getting slammed for allowing a second attempt in a matter of weeks, Trump backed up the agency, while acknowledging it faces shortages.
‘These guys do a great job.’
‘Now they do need more people and they’ve been complaining about that for a long time,’ Trump said.
His comments came at a town hall event hosted by his former Press Secretary Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who in her opening remarks blamed ‘the left’ for the attack on his life.
Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders led the town hall. ‘They’ve tried to impeach this president. They’ve tried to throw him in jail. And not once but twice, two would be assassins have tried to take this president down,’ she told the crowd
‘Can I be honest? This was more fun than a rally today,’ Trump said of the town hall format, which featured just a few audience questions and lots of cheers. He defended himself from accusations of ‘rambling’ and his Hannibal Lecter references
‘They’ve tried to impeach this president. They’ve tried to throw him in jail. And not once but twice, two would be assassins have tried to take this president down,’ she told the crowd, which booed at the mention.
Trump also took on Vice President Kamala Harris’ and media accusations of rambling.
He did so after giving a long answer to a question about the attempt on his life that veered to Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan and oil drilling in Alaska.
Trump appeared to recognize how far he had strayed. ‘This is the world’s longest answer to an otherwise simple question,’ he told the crowd jokingly.
‘We don’t mind that you give long answers because you actually have something to say,’ the Arkansas governor and his former flack told him.
‘Everybody stays ‘til the end by the way,’ Trump said.
‘If I saw them leaving I’d say and “ladies and gentlemen, make America great again” and I’d get the hell out of there.’
He also defended his Hannibal Lecter references, which the Harris campaign has been tweaking him for.
‘When I mentioned Dr Hannibal Lecter, I’m using that as an example of people that are coming in from Silence of the Lambs,’ Trump said.
A Ford auto worker asked Trump about the greatest threats to the state. Rather than jumping on the auto industry’s challenges, Trump gave a long answer about nuclear war.
‘I got along great with Kim Jong-un of North Korea. Everybody said, oh, you can’t get along with him. He liked me. I got along great with him, and he has a lot of nuclear force, but you essentially have five countries, and you’re going to have more. Whether you like it or not, you’re going to have more,’ Trump said.
Then Trump spoke about Indian and Pakistani nuclear capabilities and climate change. ‘And when I hear these people talking about global warming, that’s the global warming you have to worry about, not that the ocean is going to rise in 400 years, an eighth of an inch, and you have more seafront property, right? If that happens.’
Then Trump called for ‘doing business with Russia.’
‘They have so much in terms of minerals and things, the size of their land mass is, like four times bigger than the United States. The minerals and things they have. We can do great business, and you keep everybody happy.’
Trump did finally get around to auto jobs – but not before touching on the ‘China virus,’ tariffs, and other topics.
‘I promise about your state, you are going to have plants built at a level that you haven’t seen in 50 years,’ Trump said.
During his Bagram answer, Trump spoke length about the topic, while bizarrely mentioning the air base that the U.S. relinquished in Afghanistan, leaving equipment behind. His former press secretary did not correct him as he tried to describe the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge.
‘We have Bagram in Alaska. They say it might be as big – might be bigger than all of Saudi Arabia. I got it approved. Ronald Reagan couldn’t do it. Nobody could do it. I got it done in their first week. They terminated it. Check that one out, Bagram. Check that one out. No – Think about this between Bagram, between you go to ANWR, you take a look at the kind of things that we’ve given up.
‘We should be we should have that air base, we should have that oil,’ Trump said, finally correctly identifying the two issues.
Security was tight outside the event. But when Trump made his entrance, his security detail allowed him to walk through the packed Dort Financial Center arena to shake hands with supporters. The arena holds about 6,000 people for concerts events and was packed for the televised event.
