WASHINGTON — President Trump marked the second anniversary of his brush with death in Butler, Pa., by crediting the Almighty for helping him survive the shooting that saw a bullet come within a quarter-inch of killing him.
“Being president is a very dangerous profession,” Trump told “Fox & Friends” Monday morning. “It’s 5.2% of the presidents, basically, are killed, 8.5% are shot at or shot.”
“There’s no other industry that I can think of” that’s as dangerous, he added.
Trump had been holding a campaign rally at the Butler Farm Show Grounds on July 13, 2024, when gunman Thomas Crooks opened fire, killing spectator Corey Comperatore and injuring three others, including Trump.
The president recounted the moment when he felt a sharp pain in his right ear, likening it to a “violent” mosquito bite.
Trump was taken to the ground by Secret Service agents seconds after the shots rang out. He then stood up and pumped his fist defiantly in the air, shouting “fight” while blood trickled across his face.
“I said, ‘Wow, what was that? It’s either the biggest, most violent mosquito in history, or I just got shot,’” he described his inner monologue at the time.
“I got lucky. God was watching,” the president declared. “My son Don and Eric, both of them, they know a lot about guns. They hunt. They like to hunt, and they said from that distance, with that gun, that particular gun, there’s almost no chance of missing.”
“So God was with me.”
Just before the shooting, Trump had turned his head slightly to present a chart of immigration statistics. Some analysts believe that if he hadn’t done so, he might have suffered a fatal wound.
Crooks was killed by a Secret Service counter-sniper 16 seconds after he fired the first of eight shots. His motive remains unclear.
The Butler attack marked the closest an assassin has come to killing a former or sitting president since John Hinckley Jr. shot Ronald Reagan in 1981.
Two months later, Ryan Wesley Routh set up a sniper’s nest at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach and came within several hundred yards of the 45th president before a Secret Service agent on advance patrol spotted him and opened fire.
Routh fled, but was later busted, convicted and sentenced to life in prison this past February.
Earlier this year, the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner was interrupted when authorities say Cole Tomas Allen barged through a security checkpoint and opened fire, hitting a Secret Service agent in their bulletproof vest.
