Former president Donald Trump discussed the July attempt on his life in a conversation with Elon Musk on X on Monday night, but not before about half an hour of dead air. Echoing Governor Ron DeSantis’s (R., Fla.) sputtering presidential campaign launch, the website locked listeners out of the conversation, and those who could get in heard elevator music and then nothing.
Once Trump and Musk were able to speak, the former president launched into the story of his averted assassination.
“I didn’t know I had that much blood,” Trump said. “The doctors later told me that the ear is a place that is a very bloody place if you’re going to get hit. But, in this case, it was probably the best alternative you could even think about, because it went at the right angle, and, you know, it was a hard hit. It was very — I guess you could say surreal, but it wasn’t surreal. You know, I was telling somebody you have instances like this, or like a lot less than this, where you feel it’s a surreal situation. And I never felt that way. I knew immediately that it was a bullet. I knew immediately that it was at the ear, and because it, you know, it hit very hard but hit the ear.”
Musk then asked Trump about the security failures that ultimately led to the resignation of former U.S. Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle.
“Well, you know, I view it as two ways,” Trump said. “There should have been nobody on the roof. There were people — because there were so many tens of thousands of people there — there were people that were seeing him, and there was one woman with a red shirt and ‘Trump’ all over it, and she’s screaming, ‘That guy’s got a gun.'”
Despite the lack of proper precautions, the former president did praise the Secret Service agents who covered him after shots rang out.
“So, I was down, but the Secret Service guys, there were bullets flying over my head — you could hear ’em go whizzing — and these guy came jumping on top of me, and a young lady, Kate, would jump,” he said. “They moved so fast. And let me tell you, that took tremendous courage. Now, there was a lack of coordination. There was, you know, obviously everybody understands that. Somebody — that building should have been covered.”
Later on, Trump addressed the image of himself — fist raised, ear bloodied — standing back up after the shooting.
“I knew I was hit in the ear, but I knew I wasn’t hit anywhere else,” he told Musk. “They felt I was hit someplace. It was such a lot of blood, and they were sure that I was hit someplace else. And they were saying, ‘Sir, were you hit on more than the ear?’ I said, ‘Nope, I was hit in the ear. I want to get up. Let me get up.’ And so I got up, and the crowd didn’t know what to think. I mean, this was so many people, and they did — you could see they were confused. They didn’t know what to think. And I wanted to let them know I was okay. It was very important for me to let them know that. And they went wild. You’ve seen the after. They didn’t go wild when I got up, because they didn’t know was I alive. You really couldn’t tell when I stood up before the hand, before the, you know, the fist in the air — they didn’t know if I was alive. Nobody did. And when I put the fist up, they were — they were just relieved and happy and thrilled.”