Donald Trump said it was God’s will that there were two assassination attempts on his life because “it is God who wants me to be president.”
He did not explain in detail why the attempts on his life would mean that.
“Something is happening. Maybe God wants me to be president to save this country,” he said during a conversation on X on Monday night.
He also revealed what Joe Biden told him after the president called him on Monday night to check on him.
“He called me to make sure I was OK, to make sure that, you know, do I have any suggestions? We need more people on my team, because we have 50, 60,000 people showing up to events, and, you know, other people don’t have that,” Trump said.
He repeated his claim that the “radical left” was behind the attempts on his life, both on Sunday and at the July 13 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
“Well, there’s a lot of rhetoric involved. A lot of people think that Democrats, when they talk about threats to democracy and all that, and it seems like both of those people were radical leftists,” he said of the men who tried to shoot him.
They were Trump’s first public comments on Sunday’s assassination attempt while he was playing golf at his course in West Palm Beach, Florida.
Donald Trump made his first public comments on the second assassination attempt
“It was a very special thing, but it turned out well. The Secret Service did an excellent job and they have the man behind bars and hopefully he will be there for a long time. He is a dangerous person, very, very dangerous,” said the former president.
She described Sunday’s tour as “very peaceful, very beautiful weather. Everything was beautiful. It was a nice place to be.”
He then became dramatic and recounted what happened when he was on the fifth hole: “Suddenly, we heard gunshots in the air. I guess there were four or five. But what do I know about that? The Secret Service knew immediately that they were bullets and they grabbed me.”
He said a Secret Service agent put him in his golf cart and drove away.
“I would have loved to sink that last putt, but we decided to get out of here,” he joked.
Trump praised law enforcement for their work.
“The Secret Service did a great job. And I think I can honestly say that the sheriff’s office, law enforcement, everybody really did a great job.”
Trump’s comments came as he was pitching a new cryptocurrency business. The interview was audio-only but took place at Mar-a-Lago, the former president’s Palm Beach home. It had been scheduled before Sunday’s assassination attempt.
Trump calls the company World Liberty Financial and his children also promote it, but details are scant.
Trump has made millions of dollars selling new items featuring moments from his political life. He uses the same social media accounts promoting his presidential bid to promote his business ventures, such as $399 gold sneakers, a coffee table book or a Bible.
If Trump wins the White House in November, his latest business venture could raise a host of ethical questions.
During the election campaign, Trump announced his support for policies favorable to digital currencies.
“We are embracing the future with cryptocurrency and leaving the slow and outdated big banks behind,” Trump wrote in X.
Trump earned about $7.2 million in 2023 through a licensing deal with a company that sells digital NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, “trading cards” featuring the former president, according to his financial disclosure report.
He sold parts of the suit he was wearing during the July 13 assassination attempt and claimed to have earned $300,000 in royalties from The Greenwood Bible, a company associated with country singer Lee Greenwood.
Ryan Routh was arrested by Palm Beach police on Sunday
But his interview on X on Monday night came after authorities released more details about Sunday’s incident, including that Trump stalker Ryan Routh may have been stalking the former president for more than 11 hours at the Florida golf course where Trump was playing.
And the high-powered rifle Routh had with him may have been purchased abroad.
The new details emerged in the document filed Monday charging Routh, 58, with firearms offenses in connection with the incident. Sunday’s incident is the second such attempt on Trump’s life in the past three months.
Officials discovered that the loaded 7.62×39 SKS-style rifle had a serial number that was “obliterated and illegible to the naked eye.”
The agent who wrote the complaint said the rifles are not manufactured in Florida and that the rifle has likely “traveled in interstate or foreign commerce.”
Meanwhile, cell phone location data obtained by the FBI indicates that Routh “was located in the vicinity of the tree line area” at the Trump International Golf Course in West Palm Beach from shortly before 2 a.m. Sunday until approximately 1:30 p.m.
That’s when a Secret Service agent, who was monitoring Trump’s route ahead, saw the barrel of a gun sticking out from a nearby fence and fired at Routh. Trump was quickly evacuated.
The details suggest some level of pre-planning on Routh’s part. In addition, the fact that he spent some 12 hours on the golf course undetected has raised questions about Secret Service protective procedures.
Officials said Routh was on the public side of the perimeter fence at Trump’s golf course when the agent saw the muzzle of the rifle.
Police are still investigating all the details, including where the suspect obtained the AK-style rifle, his movements before the incident and whether anyone else was involved.
It is unclear where Routh may have parked and waited for the former president, who is known to play golf regularly at his West Palm Beach club when he is at his nearby Mar-a-Lago home.
Local police have increased security around the golf club, even closing the road leading to it to traffic other than local traffic.
At the time the agent saw the gun on Sunday, Trump was on the fifth hole at his Palm Beach golf club. The agent was on the sixth hole, doing a visual sweep ahead of the former president, when he saw the barrel of the rifle.
Routh was less than 500 yards from Trump when he was captured.
Acting Secret Service Director Ron Rowe said Monday that Routh was unable to fire a single shot and never had Trump in his “line of sight.”
‘As former President Trump was moving down the fifth fairway, across the course and out of sight of the sixth green, the officer, who was visually sweeping the sixth green area, saw the subject armed with what he perceived to be a rifle and immediately discharged his firearm,’ the officer said.
The Secret Service was criticized for failing to secure a wide enough perimeter around Trump at his July 13 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, where Thomas Matthew Crooks attempted to assassinate the former president.
But, Rowe noted, the agency had a security plan for Trump’s golf outing, which he said was not scheduled.
“We put together a security plan and that security plan worked,” he said at a news conference Monday.
Acting Director of the U.S. Secret Service Ronald Rowe Jr. speaks during a press conference
Donald Trump at his golf course in West Palm Beach
In the treeline area where Routh fled, officers found a digital camera, two purses, a loaded, scoped 7.62×39 SKS rifle and a black plastic bag containing food.
On Sunday, after the Secret Service fired shots and Routh fled, the Martin County Sheriff’s Office began stopping the vehicle and Routh was taken into custody at 2:14 p.m. Deputies said the license plate on the Nissan he was in was registered to a white 2012 Ford pickup truck that has been reported stolen.
Ryan was charged with possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number.
Investigators are attempting to restore the serial number so they can trace its origin.
Authorities said he did not appear to have fired the gun. The only shots apparently came from the Secret Service. Even if Routh had not fired the gun, he could face an attempted murder charge.
“We are investigating this matter as an apparent assassination attempt on former President Trump,” FBI Special Agent Jeffrey Veltri of the Miami Field Office said Monday afternoon at a news conference.
The Secret Service later discovered a rifle, a backpack and a GoPro video camera taped to the fence near where Routh was seen.
Routh appeared in federal court in West Palm Beach for a brief hearing Monday morning wearing a blue prison jumpsuit.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Ryon McCabe ordered Routh held without bail until a detention hearing scheduled for Sept. 23.
Police personnel investigate the area around the Trump International Golf Club
Law enforcement photos show fringes hanging from a fence over a rifle leaning against it.
Ryan Routh in federal court on Monday
Routh has a lengthy criminal history in North Carolina, including a felony conviction for possession of a weapon of mass destruction and multiple felony charges of possession of stolen property.
He also has ties to Hawaii, where he worked in construction and led a group that built housing for the homeless.
He was actively involved in efforts to recruit soldiers for the fight against Russia in Ukraine. He traveled to Ukraine in 2022 and later wrote a book: ‘Ukraine’s Unwinnable War’.
A video shot by AP showed Routh at a small rally in kyiv’s Independence Square in April 2022, two months after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an invasion of the country.
In the self-published book, which is available on Amazon, Routh was highly critical of Trump and even encouraged Iran to assassinate him.
“You are free to assassinate Trump,” Routh wrote of Iran.
Routh, who has been active on social media, said he voted for Trump in 2016 but, in a June 2020 post, criticized him.
“I and the world hoped that President Trump would be different and better than the candidate,” she wrote. “I will be glad when you are gone.”
He didn’t seem to be a fan of President Joe Biden, either.
“Sleepy Joe stands for nothing, has no plans, no ideas,” X wrote in a March 5, 2020 post.