Former President Trump and his 2024 running mate JD Vance sat down for their first joint interview with Fox News host Jesse Watters on Monday, following the attempted assassination of the Republican nominee at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, last week.
Trump said 'Jesse Watters Primetime' was conflicted Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle came to see him in the days following the assassination attempt.
“It went very well. She was very nice, I thought. But, you know, somebody should have made sure that there was nobody on that roof,” he said.
U.S. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle is sworn in before the House Oversight and Accountability Committee on the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump at a campaign event in Pennsylvania, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Monday, July 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Rod Lamkey, Jr.)
The shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, fired several shots at the former president from the roof of a building about 150 yards away.
Investigators are trying to piece together how the 20-year-old local resident was able to have a clear line of sight to Trump. Witness Michael Difrischia filmed Crooks lying on top of the American Glass Research building, looking down from the scope of a AR style rifle.
“I saw a younger boy running through the crowd and someone had spoken.[n] above [and] “He said the guy had a gun,” Difrischia told “The Ingraham Angle” last week.
WHO WAS THOMAS MATTHEW CROOKS? WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT THE TRUMP ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT
“The problem was that the police officers were too close to the building. They couldn't see it,” he added. “We were trying to tell them that it was there, that it was there, but they couldn't see it.”
Law enforcement officers stand over the body of would-be Trump assassin Thomas Crooks on Saturday, July 13, 2024. (Todd the Driller)
Other eyewitnesses said they tried to warn police officers about a shooter before he fired the shots. He grazed Trump's earkilled former Pennsylvania Fire Chief Corey Comperatore and injured David Dutch and James Copenhaven.
Trump told Watters he was surprised at how close Crooks got.
“They said it's really, it's a… a bad shot would usually hit the target. And then I mean, it has to be, somebody has to be there. And it's essentially a flat roof. I mean, I noticed that she [Cheatle] “Well, this is a sloped roof, like a barn roof, where there's a slight upward tilt, a few degrees. Essentially, it was a flat roof,” he said.
Cheatle told ABC News last week that the building the suspected shooter was in had a “slanted roof at its highest point.” “And so there's a safety factor that would be considered there that we wouldn't want to jeopardize.” Someone on top of a sloping roof,” she said.
Two FBI investigators examine the roof of AGR International Inc, the building adjacent to the Butler Fairgrounds from which suspected shooter Matthew Thomas Crooks shot former President Donald J. Trump following the assassination attempt at a campaign rally on July 14, 2024, in Butler, Pennsylvania. Trump was escorted away by the Secret Service with a wound to his ear. One attendee at the July 13 rally was killed and two others were critically injured. (Jeff Swensen/Getty Images)
Trump said he believes Cheatle was given “false information” when he cited the slope of the roof as the reason there were no Secret Service agents atop the building.
The 2024 Republican candidate questioned why he wasn't told to stay offstage for 5 to 20 minutes before coming out and starting to speak if there were concerns about a potential threat.
OFFICIAL CLAIMS MAN HAD TELEPHONE AT TRUMP RALLY 30 MINUTES BEFORE ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT: SOURCE
“You have to answer why I couldn't just stay offstage for five minutes while they did their job. Why couldn't I, you know, How does a situation happen? “Where there is a roof that is clearly visible from where he was speaking… why wouldn't someone have seen it?” he asked.
Former President Trump survived an assassination attempt on Saturday during a rally in Pennsylvania. (Trump campaign office/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Cheatle appeared at the Capitol on Monday to answer for security failures that nearly led to the assassination of a former president.
She acknowledged that the assassination attempt against Trump was the The most important operational failure in the Secret Service in decades.
Two ranking members of the House Oversight Committee, Reps. James Comer, R-Ky., and Jamie Raskin, D-Md., called on Cheatle to He resigned from his post in a letter After his testimony, he said he had failed to “provide answers to basic questions about this astonishing operational failure and to assure the American people that the Secret Service has learned its lessons and has begun to correct its mistakes and systemic failures.”
U.S. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle attends a House Oversight Committee hearing on security failures that enabled an assassination attempt on Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., July 22, 2024. (Reuters/Kevin Mohatt)
Trump praised the actions of his Secret Service agents, who rushed to cover him after shots were heard at his rally.
He told Watters that his ear is healing and getting better. “We're getting to the little bandages. But it was a nasty pain. And it was nasty, period. That was exactly a week ago, exactly. And, you know, when you think about it, it's a lot of territory covered,” he said.
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“Who would have thought this would happen? But it did. And I was very lucky, or God, I think it was God, actually.”
