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Former First Lady Melania Trump talked candidly about the moments she discovered her husband, former President Donald Trump, had been the target of two assassination attempts.
In an interview with “Fox & Friends,” Melania Trump discussed the incidents that rocked her life in detail. The first assassination attempt happened in Butler, Pennsylvania, at a rally in mid-July. Melania Trump described the bizarre experience of witnessing it happen a few minutes after it did, rather than in real-time.
“I ran to the TV and I [rewound] it and I watched it,” she revealed.
She added, “When you see him on the floor, and you don’t know what really happened.”
Thomas Matthew Crooks, the would-be assassin, set up shop on a rooftop some 130 yards from the event and opened fire on the former president multiple times. A countersniper shot and killed Crooks, but not before the bullets gave Trump a minor cut to his ear.
Two rallygoers, David Dutch and James Copenhaven, were hurt, while Corey Comperatore, a former Pennsylvania fire chief, lost his life.
The previous First Lady referred to the two attempted assassinations as “miracles.”
On September 15, when he was playing golf at his West Palm Beach club, Trump was the target of his second attempted murder. Melania Trump found out about the incident—again via television—while she was in New York.
“As soon as I saw it on television, I called again, and he was OK because Secret Service were great,” she said. “The guys that they were, the team, they were fantastic. And I think both of the events, they were really miracles. If you really think about it, July 13 was a miracle. How… like that much, and he could, you know, he could not be with us.”
WATCH:
The interview comes as Melania Trump is teasing the release of her memoir, saying after years of “public scrutiny and misrepresentation,” she will share “the truth.”
“Writing this memoir has been a deeply personal and reflective journey for me,” Trump said in a video released Thursday on social media.
“As a private person who has often been the subject of public scrutiny and misrepresentation, I feel a responsibility to clarify the facts,” Trump said ahead of the Oct. 1 release of “Melania.”
“I believe it is important to share my perspective: the truth,” she said into the camera in the video.
The 54-year-old former model, who married former President Donald Trump in 2005, announced the publication of a memoir in July. In promotional materials, publisher Skyhorse Publishing called the book an “intimate portrait of a woman who has lived an extraordinary life.”
The book is poised to include “stories and images never before shared with the public,” according to its publisher.
WATCH:
In a new promo for her forthcoming memoir, former First Lady Melania Trump says:
“As a private person, who has often been the subject of public scrutiny and misrepresentation, I feel a responsibility to clarify the facts.” pic.twitter.com/YKUQMx8viJ
— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) September 5, 2024
Donald Trump revealed this week that his youngest son, Barron Trump, learned about him being shot when he was at a tennis lesson.
During an interview with Fox News’ Mark Levin, Trump revealed his youngest son learned that his father had been shot while on the tennis court.
“He’s a good tennis player. And somebody ran up (and said), ‘Barron! Barron! Your father’s been shot,’” Trump recounted, adding that Barron reacted immediately: “He loves his father. He’s a good kid, a good student. And he ran, ‘Mom! What’s going on? What’s going on?”
In a previous interview with Fox News, Trump had spoken about Melania’s reaction to seeing the assassination attempt: “When I could talk to people, I said, ‘So what was your feeling?’, and she said she can’t even talk about it, which is okay because that means she likes me,” he said.
At another point in the interview, Trump said that, after he had been taken to safety following the shooting, his son, Donald Trump Jr., who is “great with guns,” told him, “I can’t believe it. From that distance… I can’t believe it.”
“From that distance, it’s supposed to be, like, a sure thing,” Trump continued, alluding that the shooter, Matthew Crooks, should have had no problem hitting him directly. “Like sinking a one-foot putt.”
Trump had been showing a chart of border crossing statistics when he was shot.
“If I turned around just a little bit less, or a little bit more,” he said. “If I turned around more or less, it was still the end.”