Donald Trump detailed for the first time what the FBI said was a “possible assassination attempt on the former president” on Sunday, as authorities revealed new details about the incident at his West Palm Beach golf club.
Trump said he was golfing with friends, including businessman Steve Witkoff, when he heard the gunfire.
“Everything was beautiful, it was a cozy place. All of a sudden, I heard gunshots in the air. I think it was maybe four or five. It sounded like bullets, but what do I know? But the Secret Service knew right away that they were bullets,” Trump told crypto personality Farouk Sarmad during an X livestream.
In his first public appearance since the assassination attempt, Trump thanked the Secret Service, saying shortly after gunshots were heard: “We got in the cart and we were on our way. I had agents with me, and they did a great job. There was no doubt we were off course.”
“The Secret Service did a great job, everybody did a great job,” he later said.
Trump said the gunshots were the sound of another agent firing at the barrel of a gun that was sticking out of bushes on the golf course, and that “the other one did not fire,” appearing to refer to the suspect’s gunfire.
Cellphone records show the suspect, Ryan Wesley Routh, camped out near the golf course with food for about 12 hours before he was confronted by Secret Service agents. In court documents unsealed Monday, authorities said Routh’s cellphone was near a tree on Trump’s golf course from 1:59 a.m. to 1:31 p.m. Sunday, when a Secret Service agent spotted his rifle among the foliage and fired at Routh, the Associated Press reported.
Trump’s account, which he gave on X during the launch of a cryptocurrency platform owned by his sons, largely matches what authorities said on Monday. Acting Director of the US Secret Service Ronald Rowe Jr. said earlier that the suspect did not fire a shot, but that agents opened fire after seeing a rifle protruding from a fence around the golf course.
“He (the suspect) did not fire or attempt to fire at our investigators,” said Rowe Jr. “Upon reports of gunfire, the former president’s security forces immediately evacuated the president to a safe location.”
Rowe also told reporters that Trump was out of the gunman’s sights during an unscheduled visit to his golf club.
President Trump also praised the civilians who photographed the suspect’s license plate, which helped authorities track his vehicle. “Civilians did a phenomenal job,” he said.
Where Trump differed from authorities was in his description of the political views of Routh and Thomas Matthew Crooks, the suspect killed in the July 13 assassination attempt on Trump in Pennsylvania.
Asked how he felt about the possibility of this being a second assassination attempt, he said, “Well, there’s a lot of rhetoric being thrown around. When people talk about Democrats being a ‘threat to democracy’ and stuff like that, that’s what a lot of people think of Democrats. Both of these guys seem to have been far-left.”
Routh, the man suspected of carrying out a second assassination attempt on Donald Trump, professes a range of political beliefs that elude partisan definition.
Records show that Rouse, a 58-year-old former roofing contractor, had made small donations to Democratic candidates in recent years but acknowledged voting for Trump in the 2016 election and then embarked on an ideological journey whose aims appeared incoherent and confused.
The motive of suspect Thomas Matthew Crooks remains unclear, but FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate said in July that agents were investigating social media accounts with anti-Semitic and anti-immigrant posts that may be linked to Crooks.
On Monday, Trump tried to pin the blame for the shooting on President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. “I’m being shot at because of what they’re saying and doing. I’m in a position to save our country and they’re destroying our country from the inside and out,” Trump told Fox News Digital.
“These are the people who want to destroy our country,” he added. “They’re called the enemy from within. They are the real threat.”
Harris, her campaign, her running mate Tim Walz and the Biden administration have condemned the political violence. The White House said Biden had called Trump earlier and “expressed relief that he is safe. They had a cordial conversation and former President Trump expressed his gratitude for the call.”
President Trump was impeached on Jan. 6, 2021, for inciting an insurrection, but later secured enough Republican support in the Senate to be acquitted.
At the X event on Monday night, Trump reiterated his frustration with Biden choosing to withdraw from the presidential race. He said he spoke to Biden on Monday and “couldn’t have been more gracious.”
But Trump attacked his rival presidential candidate Harris, saying, “We can’t have a Marxist communist as our president.”