"I should be dead"

Trump: “Doctor spoke of a miracle”

Donald Trump is carried off the stage to safety, injured.

(Bild: APA/Getty Images via AFP/GETTY IMAGES/Anna Moneymaker)

While Trump supporters and the international media spread the dramatic images of the bleeding ex-US president, Donald Trump himself is firing up the miracle of Butler, where he narrowly escaped death during a campaign speech on Saturday. Only God could have been involved, or good luck, Trump said in his first interview after the attack.

The 78-year-old described the gun attack on him as a "very surreal experience". "I'm not supposed to be here, I'm supposed to be dead," Trump said in an interview published on Monday by the tabloid New York Post during his flight to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he is to be officially nominated as a candidate for the presidential election in November at a Republican Party convention this week.

Donald Trump was talking about his country's problems with illegal migration when the shots were fired.

(Bild: APA/AP)

"Many say it's by God that I'm still here"
If he had not turned his head slightly to the right during his speech to read out a migration statistic, he would have been killed by the bullet, the Republican said. The fact that he had only suffered a graze shot to his right ear had come about "by luck or God". "A lot of people say it's by God that I'm still here," said Trump

The challenger to incumbent Joe Biden also reported that he had wanted to continue his speech after the attack. However, Secret Service officers told him he was not safe and that they would have to take him to hospital. The doctor there then told him that he had never seen anything like it, "he called it a miracle". According to the doctor, he had never seen anyone survive a gunshot wound from an AR-15 rifle before. 

The assassin was quickly eliminated. However, the security forces have to put up with harsh criticism as to how the armed man was able to climb onto the roof of a nearby building to shoot at Donald Trump.

(Bild: Krone KREATIV/Google Maps)

Praise for Secret Service: "Shot right between the eyes"
The former president praised the Secret Service officers for quickly shooting the suspected perpetrator. "They took him out with a shot right between the eyes," he said. "They did a fantastic job."

Trump now wants to revise his speech for the party convention. He had originally prepared "an extremely tough speech" about President Biden's "terrible administration". However, he has thrown this text away and now wants to give a speech "that unites our country". However, he did not know whether this was possible. People are "very divided".