In a recent discussion with billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, former US President Donald Trump opened up about what he referred to as a “hard hit” during a recent assassination attempt.
During an interview on X, after being asked by the owner how the shooting was for him, Trump described the experience as not pleasant, “It was a hard hit. It was very, I guess you would say, surreal, but it wasn’t surreal. You know, I was telling somebody, you have instances like this … where you feel it’s a surreal situation. And I never felt that way. I knew immediately that it was a bullet,” Trump said, recounting the moment when the bullet grazed his ear.
Trump further shared that as he went down after being hit, his immediate concern was, “How many were killed?” He elaborated, “Because we had a massive crowd there—a tremendous thousands and thousands of people. . So he said, ‘How many people have been killed?’ Because he knew there were other shots being fired.
Elon Musk, the platform’s owner, later revealed that his endorsement of Trump’s presidential campaign was influenced by Trump’s reaction to the assassination attempt during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania last month. Musk found Trump’s gesture of pumping his fists “just incredibly inspiring,” according to a report by CNN.
The incident took place on July 13 during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania, when gunshots rang out, prompting Secret Service agents to storm the stage. Trump later confirmed that the bullet had grazed the upper part of his right ear.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) identified the shooter as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks from Bethel Park, Pennsylvania. It is also noteworthy that the conversation between Musk and Trump on X was delayed, starting at 8:42 pm ET on Monday due to a technical glitch. The event had initially been scheduled for 8 pm
Musk explained that the delay was caused by a cyberattack, stating that a distributed denial-of-service attack “saturated … hundreds of gigabits of data,” overwhelming X’s servers, as reported by CNN.