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Former President Donald Trump opened his presidential nominating speech on Thursday with an emotional recounting of the shooting at his rally last week that left him injured and killed another.
“As you already know, the assassin’s bullet came within a quarter of an inch of taking my life,” he said. “So many people have asked me what happened. ‘Tell us what happened, please,’ and therefore I will tell you exactly what happened, and you’ll never hear it from me a second time, because it’s actually too painful to tell.”
For more than 10 minutes, Trump recounted to the Republican National Convention in vivid details his observations of the attack on the “warm, beautiful day in the early evening In Butler township in the great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.”
Trump, in a more subdued and somber tone than his usual bombast, said that he felt something hit his ear, and that he “felt very safe, because I had God on my side.”
“I’m not supposed to be here tonight,” Trump said as the crowd responded “Yes you are!” “Not supposed to be here… I thank you, but I’m not, and I’ll tell you, I stand before you in this arena only by the grace of Almighty God.”
Trump also offered condolences to the family of Corey Comperatore, a volunteer firefighter who was killed in the shooting, walking over to a display of Comperatore’s fire gear before leading a moment of silence.
It’s his first public address since Saturday’s rally.
Trump said in the days leading up to this address that he rewrote his grand nominating address to strike a tone of unity after the near-death experience, vowing to unify a divided country.
“As Americans, we are bound together by a single fate and a shared destiny,” he said. “We rise together, or we fall apart. I am running to be president for all of America, not half of America, because there is no victory in winning for half of America.”
