Obviously, you ARE supposed to be here, Mr. President!
TRUMP: 'I'M NOT SUPPOSED TO BE HERE': Former President Donald Trump can't stop thinking about the way he moved his head in the split second before a gunman, intent on assassinating him, pulled the trigger during his speech in Pennsylvania Saturday evening...
"The most incredible thing was that I happened to not only turn but to turn at the exact right time and in just the right amount," Trump said Sunday afternoon in a talk aboard his Boeing 757 as he flew to Milwaukee for the start of the Republican National Convention. "If I only half-turn, it hits the back of the brain. The other way goes right through [the skull]. And because the sign was high, I'm looking up. The chances of my making a perfect turn are probably one-tenth of 1%, so I'm not supposed to be here."
"I had to be at the exact right angle," Trump said at another point in the conversation, which included the New York Post's Michael Goodwin. "Because the thing was an eighth of an inch away. That I would turn exactly at that second, where he [the gunman] wouldn't stop the shot is pretty amazing. Pretty amazing. I'm really not supposed to be here."
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I said that watching the video, it appeared that after being shot, surrounded by agents shielding him from any further threat, Trump actually wanted to return to the microphone to continue speaking. Indeed he did. "I wanted to keep speaking -- I wanted to keep speaking, but I just got shot," Trump said with a little laugh. "It's a very surreal experience, and you never know what you're going to do until a thing like that happens."
It was obvious that Trump was still processing what had happened. Who wouldn't be? It is something that will stay with him for the rest of his life. At the moment, he is grappling with the feeling that something very big has changed in his life and in the presidential race. When I asked him, "Does this change your campaign?" he immediately answered, "Yes."
Trump explained that before Saturday night, he had finished the speech he planned to give later this week at the Republican convention. "I basically had a speech that was an unbelievable rip-roarer," he said. "It was brutal -- really good, really tough. [Last night] I threw it out. I think it would be very bad if I got up and started going wild about how horrible everybody is and how corrupt and crooked, even if it's true. Had this not happened, we had a speech that was pretty well set that was extremely tough. Now, we have a speech that is more unifying."
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The idea is to reframe the intense conflicts Trump has engaged in during his years in national politics. "I've been fighting a group of people that I considered very bad people for a long time, and they've been fighting me, and we've put up a very good fight," Trump said. "We had a very tough speech, and I threw it out last night. I said I can't say these things after what I've been through."
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"I'd love to achieve unity if you could achieve unity, if that's possible," Trump said. "There are many good people on the other side. ... But there are also people who are very divided. Some people actually want open borders, and some people don't want open borders. The question is can those two sides get together? Can sides where you have people who want to see men play in women's sports and you have a side that doesn't understand even the concept of allowing that to happen [get together]?"
Trump knows it's a long shot. "It has an impact," he said of the assassination attempt. "Now, maybe the impact will wear off if the other side gets nasty." It seems quite likely that that is exactly what will happen and the fighting will resume, even though both Trump and President Joe Biden are talking about unity.
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