Shots fired and ‘rather quick golf carts’: Trump tells the story

By Marc A Thiessen

PALM BEACH, Florida, US — Sitting in his private office at Mar-a-Lago the day after a second attempt on his life, Donald Trump described for me the chaotic scene at his West Palm Beach, Florida golf club on Sunday.

The walls of his office are lined with old black-and-white family portraits, as well as more recent White House photos of Queen Elizabeth II — Trump’s Scottish mother was a huge admirer of the late British monarch — and his meeting with Kim Jong Un at the dividing line between North and South Korea. From behind his large oak desk, Trump told me what happened in the moments after a Secret Service agent noticed the barrel of an assault rifle sticking through the hedges lining the course about 400 yards away from the former president.

Unlike his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania in July, there is no video or photography of this apparent assassination attempt, so I asked Trump to walk me through what happened.

“Well, this is a much different circumstance,” he said. “I was at the golf course at Trump International and playing. We were on the fifth hole and playing normally, like you would play a round of golf with some friends, and we heard bullets. But the bullets were from the gun of the Secret Service agent who acted really quickly.

“They saw a man in bushes and the gun, and he spotted him and he spotted the barrel of the gun and he started shooting. And the end result is they captured him and they’re questioning him now. … And we had very good Secret Service. I mean, I think they did a very good job.”

“The end result is they got him,” Trump said.

‘RATHER QUICK GOLF CARTS’

Did agents jump on him when the shots rang out, as they did in Pennsylvania? “No, we actually did more of get-out-of-the-area thing,” he said. “And that would be on the golf carts — rather quick golf carts. So, in this case. But they were very protective, very good. They did a great job and tough.”

I pointed out that in just nine weeks he has faced two assassination attempts. How, I asked, has it affected him? “Well, it hasn’t affected me,” Trump said. “I mean, I try not to think about it. But people ask me that question a lot, and I try not to think about it. This was different from the first one, but this one in a certain way was, I mean, the gun was even more violent. And the bullets were from Secret Service, and they caught him. They caught him before anything happened. But it would have happened. I mean, he’s somebody that it would have happened.”

We are still learning about this gunman, but Trump assigns blame to Democratic campaign rhetoric that portrays him as a threat to democracy. “I think a lot of it is the rhetoric that the Democrats are putting out between the rhetoric and lawsuits that we won in Florida.

“And it works both ways because the Republicans are angry about it. And the Democrats are [angry] when they hear a threat to democracy. I’m actually the opposite of a threat to [democracy]. They’re the threat to democracy. I mean, they’ve gone against their political opponent with lawyers, never happened. … This happens in South America a lot, but this never happened here. And when they hear all of this rhetorical splendour that they throw out — even the congressmen and they have the kind of statements that are made — I think it’s a disgrace.

“I really believe that the rhetoric from the Democrats is making — I put out a [Truth Social post] today — is making the bullets fly. And it’s very dangerous. Dangerous for them. It’s dangerous for both sides.”

He does, however, praise Democrats on Capitol Hill who are taking congressional investigations into the assassinations seriously. “One thing I’ll say is that the investigation that’s going on is, believe it or not, it seems to be non-partisan. The Democrats are just as angry about Butler and this one as the Republicans, because it can happen to them. And they understand that and they don’t want that. And I don’t think they want it to happen to me, either. But rhetorically, it’s very dangerous what they do.”

AN ANGEL

At one point during our interview, Trump was handed a note that the acting head of the Secret Service, Ronald Rowe, was waiting to see him. He paused our conversation to meet with him. Then, before resuming, Trump called the family of Corey Comperatore, the Pennsylvania firefighter who was fatally shot during the Butler attack. Afterwards, Trump showed me a photo of two American flags on separate cranes that were above him at the Butler rally — tangled together into what he pointed out was the shape of an angel.

When I asked about his meeting with Rowe, Trump was circumspect. “I think he’s trying very hard, but we have people out there that they’ll listen to statements made and they almost think that it’s a calling [to kill me],” he said. “But they say very bad things and they can make somebody that’s not balanced into a very severely unbalanced person. And then they lie in wait.”

I suggested that, after two assassination attempts, MAGA voters will walk over hot coals to vote for him, but the election will be decided by a small number of voters in a handful of swing states. (“Maybe, and maybe a lot,” Trump interjected. “I have a feeling that it might be a lot.”) Many of those swing voters, I told him, like your policies and don’t like the direction of the country, but are not sure about putting you back in the Oval Office. What, I ask, is your message to them?

‘THEY DO LIKE ME’

“Well, I was a president that had tremendous success,” he said. “Between the tax cuts, the economy until the pandemic … I did a great job during the pandemic, [and] never got the credit I got for the economy and the military.”

“So,” he continued, “if they want safety, if they want low taxes, if they want all the things that I provided — and I think they do — and I think our vote is much bigger than what, and traditionally it’s been both elections.”

He added: “I think they do like our policies. And a couple of politicians said, ‘Well, without Trump, the policies aren’t the same and you need Trump for the policies.’”

“I mean a lot of people say, well, they love your policy, they love the job you did, but they might not like you. And I actually think they do like me.”

* Marc Thiessen writes a column for The Post on foreign and domestic policy. He is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and the former chief speech writer for President George W Bush.

– THE WASHINGTON POST