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In his first televised interview after an attempted assassination, Donald Trump questioned why there weren\u2019t \u201cenough people\u201d protecting him at the Pennsylvania rally and took a dig at his rival despite his pledge for unity after the shooting.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe problem is Biden doesn\u2019t draw anybody. He draws flies,\u201d said Trump, sitting beside his running mate JD Vance for their first interview together on Fox News.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe draws nobody,\u201d Trump said Monday. \u201cYou don\u2019t need very many people for that because he does not draw \u2014 30 people show up. We have 55, 65,000 people.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump, whose ear was covered in a small brown bandage, said he was not given any warning of a \u201cproblem\u201d from Secret Service agents and other officers following reports that top law enforcement officials had denied Trumps\u2019 requests for additional manpower at events before the shooting in Pennsylvania this month.<\/p>\n
\u201cNobody mentioned it, nobody said there was a problem,\u201d he said. \u201cI would\u2019ve waited for 15 \u2014 they could\u2019ve said, \u2018Let\u2019s wait for 15 minutes, 20 minutes, 5 minutes,\u2019 something. Nobody said.\u201d<\/p>\n
Donald Trump and JD Vance took shots at the FBI and Joe Biden supporters despite calls for unity after the Pennsylvania shooting (Fox News)Trump and Vance quickly abandoned any pretense of a call for national unity after the former president was nearly killed. Both men returned to trashing their political opponents and depicting a nation in chaos at rallies in the week that followed, including in 90-minute headlining remarks to the Republican National Convention last week.<\/p>\n
During the Fox News interview, Trump also suggested that Biden\u2019s doctors should be investigated after providing reports on his condition after he was diagnosed with COVID-19 and appeared to float a conspiracy theory that the 20-year-old gunman who fired at him \u201chad some encrypted phone numbers and to foreign countries.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou hear all different stories,\u201d Trump said. \u201cI would say probably he was a loner, but you don\u2019t know that. You have to check out the phone numbers, you have to check out the phone.\u201d<\/p>\n
The interview \u2013 which was recorded on Saturday, one day before President Biden dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed Kamala Harris for the Democratic nomination \u2014 aired the same day that Secret Service Director Kim Cheatle testified to members of Congress about apparent failures at the rally, as she faces calls to resign from members of both parties.<\/p>\n
In her testimony to the House Oversight Committee on Monday, Cheatle said the shooting was \u201cthe most significant operational failure at the Secret Service in decades.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are multiple ongoing investigations into this incident, hundreds of people to interview, and thousands of documents to review,\u201d she said. \u201cI do not want to inadvertently provide you today with inaccurate information \u2026 I may not be able to speak specifically to certain items that have circulated over the past nine days.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Republican ticket sat down with Fox\u2019s Jesse Watters to discuss the assassination attempt and selecting a running mate (Fox News)Trump told Fox News that Cheatle \u201ccame to see him.\u201d She was \u201cnice\u201d but he said \u201cyou have to answer, why could I not have stayed off the stage for five minutes?\u201d<\/p>\n
Vance told Fox News that he does not trust FBI leadership. The bureau\u2019s director, Christopher Wray, was appointed by Trump in 2017.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat the hell was going on?\u201d Vance said of the shooting. \u201cHow was that guy ever allowed to be there in the first place? I think somebody, whether it\u2019s higher up or somebody else involved, really did screw up, and we have to get to the bottom of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
If Trump was killed, \u201cthe unrest in this country, the anger, it would have taken this country half a century to get over it,\u201d Vance said.<\/p>\n
Trump said there are \u201cgreat people\u201d in the FBI \u2014 \u201cthey tend to be at the mid and lower levels, and they\u2019re MAGA\u201d \u2014 but \u201cthere\u2019s some things going on with our government that we have to really worry about.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inboxGet our free Inside Washington email In his first televised interview after an attempted assassination, Donald Trump questioned why there weren\u2019t \u201cenough people\u201d protecting him at the Pennsylvania rally and took a dig at his rival despite his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3447,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[173],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n