Donald Trump is throwing off laugh lines in public about his second close call – but to many of his devoted followers, the repeat attempts on his life are deeply concerning and infuriating.
‘Every stinking day something happens to him. When he got shot, I almost flipped out,’ said Richard Moran, a retired Chrysler worker from Ortonville.
Moran said he was never interested in politics until Trump came on the scene. Now, he’s behind him ‘all the way.’
‘I don’t understand it. They saw the kid walking around but they didn’t do anything,’ he said of first attempt on Trump’s life in Butler, Pennsylvania.
‘If it had been Biden, they would have been on it,’ he posited. ‘But with Trump, they just kind of let it go. It’s doggone serious, too. When Kennedy got killed, they were on it all the time. When he gets it – no big deal.’
Moran came to hear Trump speak at a town hall in Flint that the candidate observed was ‘more fun’ than a rally amid a cheering crowd and softball questions from his former press secretary.
Terry Hoover said the attempts on Donald Trump’s life made her ‘angry’ and hoped it gets him a boost in protection
Days after his second brush with death, Trump spoke about how he came within a fraction of an inch of taking a bullet to the head in the first attempt on his life. He praised the eagle-eyed woman who helped authorities nab the suspect who set up a sniper’s nest at his Florida golf course.
He threw off several jokes about the incident Tuesday, inside a venue with ramped up security where police officers blocked roadways and a phalanx surrounded Trump when he walked through the crowd. ‘You know, only consequential presidents get shot at,’ Trump said at one point.
But Terry Hoover, who runs an upholstery business in Flint, said the second attempt made her ‘angry.’
‘There’s so many foolish people out there,’ she said. ‘Hopefully now he’s going to have some protection he needs.’
Trump and his campaign are using the attempts on his life as a rallying cry. On Tuesday night in a packed arena venue in Flint, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Sanders connected the shooter to ‘the left’ and prosecutors who brought criminal cases against Trump.
Outside the venue, Jamie McNally of Frankenmouth brought three kids, her husband, and family members to the event, while another son is overseas in the Air Force.
‘That’s super crazy. It was happening again. Didn’t stop me from coming out with my kids, or any of us. We were like: nope. We’re not letting that scare us. We’re not. That’s what they want. And we’re not going to be part of that.’
Jamie McNally brought her family to a Trump town hall and said the threats to Trump won’t keep her away
When he got shot, I almost flipped out,’ said Richard Moran, a retired Chrysler worker from Ortonville
Trump and other speakers invoked the assassination attempts at the rally
Former President Doanld Trump said only ‘consequential’ presidents get shot at, and stressed what most impressed him about the response to the second assassination attempt against him
Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders led the town hall. ‘They’ve tried to impeach this president. They’ve tried to throw him in jail. And not once but twice, two would be assassins have tried to take this president down,’ she told the crowd
Her daughter wore a T-shirt to the event saying ‘You missed, b******.’ A son wore a shirt emblazoned with ‘fight, fight, fight’ – with a photo of Trump with his fist raised following the first assassination attempt.
Trump hasn’t just used the incidents for laughs. He has also used it in fundraising appeals, and the campaign has made his defiant pose after the first attempt a defining image of its literature.
The former president also commented Tuesday on just how different the situation had not a Secret Service officer, an alert bystander, and police acted as they did. ‘If it weren’t for that, ‘I’d be walking around saying I wonder where this guy is? Is he in this audience? We would have a maniac out here,’ he said.
Also angered by the incident was GOP Senate candidate Mike Rogers, a former House Intelligence panel chair and a former FBI special agent.
‘It’s incompetence. Completely,’ Rogers told DailyMail.com.
‘You can’t leave a guy – get a long gun in the bushes on a place where your Protectee is going to be. It’s not like he doesn’t golf. I don’t buy that. That’s incompetence. I don’t know what is going on over there, but I thought it was an incompetent failure the first time. This, to me, looks like an incompetent failure a second time.’
President Joe Biden carried Genesee County, which includes Flint, in 2020, by a 54 to 45 margin, while winning the state. Trump only alluded to his false claims to have won the state, saying there was ‘a lot of love in this room’ and that ‘we ran in 2020 and we did much better than in 2016.’
‘But we had a lot of things happen and we know what those things are,’ he said.
It is an area where he can try to pick away at the margin while facing Vice President Harris. Polls show the state in a near tie.
