Trump Announces Plan To Return To Site Of Rally Attack
Former President Donald Trump made a surprising announcement on Friday, revealing his plans to return to the site of his attempted assassination.
He shared the news on his Truth Social account:
“I WILL BE GOING BACK TO BUTLER, PENNSYLVANIA, FOR A BIG AND BEAUTIFUL RALLY, HONORING THE SOUL OF OUR BELOVED FIREFIGHTING HERO, COREY, AND THOSE BRAVE PATRIOTS INJURED TWO WEEKS AGO. WHAT A DAY IT WILL BE — FIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHT! STAY TUNED FOR DETAILS.”
On July 13, Trump was at the site when an attacker named Thomas Matthew Crooks fired eight shots from an AR-15 style rifle. The incident ended with Crooks being killed by a counter-sniper team. Trump was grazed on the ear, two others were injured, and Corey Comperatore, a firefighter, was killed while protecting his wife and daughters.
“He’s my hero,” Corey’s wife, Helen Comperatore, told The New York Post after the shooting. “He just said, ‘Get down!’ That was the last thing he said.”
Helen mentioned that President Joe Biden called her after the shooting, but she declined to speak with him.
“I didn’t talk to Biden. I didn’t want to talk to him,” she said. “My husband was a devout Republican, and he would not have wanted me to talk to him.”
However, she clarified that she bore no ill will towards Biden.
“I don’t have any ill will towards Joe Biden,” she said. “I’m not one of those people that gets involved in politics. I support Trump, that’s who I’m voting for, but I don’t have ill will towards Biden.
“He didn’t do anything to my husband. A 20-year-old despicable kid did.”
The couple, childhood sweethearts, were about to celebrate their 29th wedding anniversary.
“Me and the kids were all there as a family,” she said. “He was just excited. It was going to be a nice day with the family.
“It was a bad day,” she added. “He was a very loving husband.”
“He was a simple man but he put his wife and kids first all the time. I did nothing here. I didn’t lift a finger. He did everything,” she shared.
Trump recounted the harrowing experience during his speech accepting the Republican nomination for president at the Republican National Convention.
“As you already know, the assassin’s bullet came within a quarter of an inch of taking my life. So many people have asked me what happened, tell us what happened, please. And therefore I will tell you exactly what happened and you will never hear it from me a second time, because it is actually too painful to tell,” Trump said.
“It was a warm, beautiful day in the early evening in Butler Township in the great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Music was loudly playing and the campaign was doing really well. I went to the stage, and the crowd was cheering wildly. Everybody was happy. I began speaking very strongly, powerfully, and happily,” he added.
Trump described how he turned his head at the last second, which likely saved his life as a bullet grazed his right ear.
“In order to see the chart, I started to, like this, turn to my right and was ready to begin a little bit further turn, which I am very lucky I didn’t do. When I heard a loud, whizzing sound and felt something hit me really, really hard,” Trump said. “On my right ear. I said to myself, wow, what was that? It can only be a bullet.”
“I immediately knew it was very serious that we were under attack and, in one movement, proceeded to drop to the ground. Bullets were continuing to fly as very brave Secret Service agents rushed to the stage and they really did, they rushed to the stage. These are great people. At great risk, I will tell you. And pounced on top of me so that I would be protected,” he concluded.