Former President Donald Trump knew the risks of serving in the highest office in the land before the first attempt on his life, telling Breitbart News exclusively in August, “You can never be too prepared” for facing the perils of the “dangerous profession.”
Trump detailed the July 13 assassination attempt with Breitbart News Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow and Washington Bureau Chief Matt Boyle exclusively. The interview took place just weeks after the first attempt on his life in which Trump was shot in the ear, a fraction of an inch away from death, and before law enforcement foiled Sunday’s assassination attempt.
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“Being president is a dangerous profession,” Trump told Breitbart News from his office in Mar-A-Lago. “If you look: How many people have been assassinated? Then you see: How many people have been attempted? You know, Reagan almost died — he came close to dying, actually. People don’t know that, but they thought they were going to lose him.”
Trump noted that out of 46 presidents, four, around 12 percent, have been assassinated — a much higher percentage than most other professions.
Presidents Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley, and John F. Kennedy were assassinated, while many more presidents have faced assassination plots. President Ronald Reagan was shot while in office, and others — including Presidents Andrew Jackson, William Howard Taft, Herbert Hoover, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama — faced foiled assassination plots while in office.
Trump and Teddy Roosevelt were wounded in failed assassination attempts while seeking to return to the White House.
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“It’s a pretty high number,” Trump said. “And if you talk about attempted, attempted is pretty bad, too.”
Trump told Breitbart News that no person can truly be prepared to face their own mortality at the hands of an assassin.
“You can never be too prepared for that — you don’t want to be prepared for that, actually,” Trump said. “But it’s a dangerous profession. Being president is a very dangerous thing. I knew that — I always knew that. Especially if you have strong opinions and strong convictions — like you want borders and a strong economy and a strong military and you want things that are important for the nation. The tougher you are in terms of things that are important for the nation, the more dangerous it becomes.”
Trump described in-depth what ran through his mind in the aftermath of being struck by a bullet.
“A lot of times, and I was thinking about this, it would seem like a surreal moment — like, you don’t realize almost where you are,” Trump recalled. “I never felt that. I knew immediately I got hit by a bullet.”
Trump said if the bullet had actually hit his head rather than his ear, “my head would have exploded like a watermelon,” and that America’s adversaries would have used it as propaganda against the United States.
“How about if you had that on slow-motion instant replay?” Trump said. “Couple of things just to think of it because it’s got to be divine intervention.”
Trump also said that Democrats constantly and falsely saying he is a threat to democracy is not helpful in stopping incidents like these.
“I think it might have had something to do with the left,” Trump said. “I’m not sure. Certainly, the way they talk about threat to democracy all the time — I think that’s a terrible statement to make. They don’t believe any of it. A lot of people think it’s their rhetoric that caused this. Their rhetoric is terrible. All I want to do is Make America Great Again. We have a name — Make America Great Again. But it’s a dangerous business. Think of it — the percentage — around 12 percent. That’s worse than going up in spaceships, and that’s not a good one, either. But it’s a lot safer than this.”
Read Trump’s in-depth conversation with Breitbart News about the first assassination attempt here.
Bradley Jaye is a Capitol Hill Correspondent for Breitbart News. Follow him on X/Twitter at @BradleyAJaye.
