Former President Donald Trump can be a real hoot when he’s in his element. Tuesday night, he was most definitely in his element as he participated in a town hall in Flint, Michigan, hosted by his former Press Secretary, Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
Over the course of roughly an hour, Trump answered a wide array of questions about the economy, inflation, taxes, energy, and trade.
Full video of the town hall may be viewed at the end of the article — but I wanted to highlight the former president’s recounting of how, miraculously, a woman who witnessed the suspect (Ryan Routh) fleeing the scene of the second assassination attempt in West Palm Beach, Florida, on Sunday, tracked him and provided critical information to the authorities, allowing them to apprehend Routh quickly.
Watch:
President Trump recounts the assassination attempt against him just two days ago — and the miracle of a woman who just so happened to catch the psycho’s license plate and call it in pic.twitter.com/ejP0lo179g
— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) September 17, 2024
TRUMP: And I have to say…while we’re on the subject — because people do like to talk about it — a few days ago, we had an incident. I have to say, Secret Service did a helluva job. They really did. They caught…one of the agents was walking a couple of holes in front, and he saw a rifle — AK47; that’s serious stuff, right? You know more about this — my sons know more about this stuff — but AK47, that’s a bad one. The other one was an AR15. This was an AK47. And he saw the barrel of a gun coming out from a bush — can you believe it? This guy was all set — he was all set to do his number. And there was no talk — he didn’t say, [funny voice] “Hello, what are you doing here, please?” and [so that] he ends up getting shot himself. He took his gun and started shooting him.
And this guy ran…Where is he [the agent]? Not here, right? This guy, these guys do a great job. Now, they do need more people, and they’ve been complaining about that for a long time, but he did a great job.
But you want to know another sort of a miracle? So the guy’s now running for his life, and he’s got a car a block away or whatever. And a woman — this is a woman, not a man, a woman, see? Women are smarter than men. I hate to say…how does that sound? Our great First Lady is very happy now.
Let me just, let me just tell you — think of this — who would do this? I actually asked — I was with the Sheriff this morning, I was with a couple of people from Secret Service — who would do this? So you now have a man running — not with a gun, he dropped the gun, we found the gun, but he was gone. And a woman, driving in a car, saw a man on the street — pretty busy street — running. And she followed him. And he got into the car. And she stopped because she thought he was trouble — he looked different…like trouble. She followed him — it wasn’t very far — and parked the car behind his car and started taking pictures of his license plate.
No, think of it. And — Sarah, think of it! No, no — seriously, who would DO that?! It’s —
SANDERS: The women!
TRUMP: — not for good or bad, not from strength or heroism. No, just, you see somebody running — I see people running all the time, and you don’t fol— she saw something in this guy that was bad. She may have heard, maybe, gunshots because there were four, I guess, four gunshots. Actually, the shots — he never got off a shot — the shots were from Secret Service. But think of it — who would do this? If you took a thousand of these incidents, would even one person have done it? This woman was — I haven’t met her, but I’d like to meet her, I’m going to meet her, I hope.
But think of this: She goes and she takes pictures of the plate, and then she sends the pictures into the Sheriff’s Office. And the sheriffs are saying, “Wow, this is pretty amazing.” And they were able to get this guy within 10 minutes — they had a high-speed chase on the highway — they got him. Otherwise, we’d probably have an AK47; they had the camera, they had the whole thing — he had the whole thing, he was a sophisticated guy. He even had the serial number taken off the rifle, the gun. But think of this: So we’d have all this stuff, but I’d be walking around saying, “I wonder where this guy is? Is he in this audience?” We would have a maniac out there. This woman was unbelievable because — I actually asked the Sheriff, “If it happened a thousand times, would anybody have done that?” He said, “Maybe, but not much, not much.” So she did a, she was really amazing — amazing job.
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The transcription doesn’t fully capture the animation and humor of Trump’s retelling of the story — which is wild in itself when you think of it: The man just narrowly missed a second attempt on his life in a two-month span, and he’s talking about it like it was just a regular old day on the golf course, while simultaneously expressing his amazement and gratitude at the good work of the agent and the helpfulness of the witness.
We see so much of him that we’re treated to varying versions of Trump — some more appealing than others. Trump at Tuesday night’s town hall was, I think, my favorite version. He just let his hair down, relaxed, and had fun — even while talking about serious issues and situations.
Trump’s not asking for my advice, but if he were, I’d say: Do lots of these. His interaction with Sanders and with the crowd was just enjoyable to watch. The sort of interactions that reassure voters who may still have reservations.
