“I should be dead,” former US President Donald Trump said after surviving an assassination attempt that he described as “a very surreal experience” in an interview broadcast Sunday by the New York Post.
• Read also: A high-tension Republican convention to crown Trump
• Read also: Attack on Trump puts emotions back at the heart of the campaign
• Read also: Here’s what we learned in the aftermath of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump
“I shouldn’t be here, I should be dead,” Donald Trump told the newspaper, during an interview aboard his plane en route to Milwaukee for the Republican Party convention where he is expected to be confirmed as the party’s presidential nominee.
- Listen to the‘analysis by Luc Laliberté, specialist in American politics:
It was a “very surreal experience,” he said of the attack, wearing a white bandage over his right ear, according to the newspaper.
The 78-year-old former president and new candidate for the White House was injured in the ear and evacuated with a bloody cheek after several shots that killed one spectator and seriously injured two others at a meeting on Saturday in Butler, Pennsylvania.
The Republican claimed that if he had not tilted his head slightly to the right to look at a painting projected to the public about illegal immigrants, he would have died, the conservative daily reports.
“It’s by luck or by the grace of God, many people say it’s by the grace of God, that I’m still here,” he said.
- Did the secret services act properly? Listen to Michel Juneau-Katsuya’s analysis:
He praised the agents of the Secret Service, an elite police force responsible for protecting high-ranking political figures, for killing the shooter.
“They shot him right between the eyes,” he said. “They did a fantastic job.” “It’s surreal for all of us.”
Photos of Donald Trump raising his fist in defiance at the crowd as agents led him away went viral around the world.
“A lot of people say it’s the most iconic photo they’ve ever seen,” he said. “They’re right and I’m not dead. Usually you have to die to have an iconic photo.”
After the assassination attempt, Mr Trump said he rewrote the speech he had prepared for the Republican convention.
He said he had “prepared an extremely tough speech” about the “horrible Biden administration,” but abandoned it for a speech he hopes will “unite the country.”
“But I don’t know if it’s possible. People are very divided.”