Melania Trump relives ‘traumatic’ experience of watching assassination attempt with Barron
Melania Trump has revealed Donald Trump’s first words to her immediately after he survived an assassination attempt at a rally.
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Former first lady Melania Trump has recalled the horror of watching the first assassination attempt on husband Donald Trump at a Pennsylvania rally, and how “traumatic” it was for their teen son Barron to see the replays in the media.
In her forthcoming memoir, Mrs Trump reveals that before former US president Mr Trump arrived at the campaign rally in Butler on July 13 she had said “good luck, be safe.”
Mrs Trump, who has been married to the Republican candidate for 19 years, then said she would be watching her husband at the rally, according to an excerpt from her new self-titled memoir.
According to the New York Post, the former fashion model, 54, had the event on television paused when she suddenly received a chilling call from her chief of staff who told her, quivering, that “there was a shooting.”
Mrs Trump then remembered watching “the chaos unfold” on her screen as a gunman opened fire, and her husband instinctively reached for his head as a bullet grazed his ear, she wrote.
“‘He’s on the ground,’ I called out. ‘Are you sure he’s OK?’”she remembered asking her chief of staff as her husband was surrounded by Secret Service agents on stage.
Mr Trump would emerge on his feet with blood streaked across his face before being whisked away by his security detail.
The gunman, 20-year-old Michael Thomas Crooks, was immediately shot dead by a Secret Service sniper.
Mrs Trump wrote that she frantically made calls to her husband and his Secret Service detail, who informed her that they were at the hospital.
When she finally got her husband on the line, his first words were a reassuring, “I’m OK,” she wrote.
The most difficult part about the ordeal, she wrote, was breaking the news to their 18-year-old son Barron, who had to relive the nightmare over and over again as the harrowing shooting footage was repeatedly splashed across news and social media.
“We replayed the footage and watched it together. We were both in shock. As we tuned into the news coverage, I felt a deep sense of distress,” Mrs Trump wrote.
“Can I explain how traumatic it is for a child to witness the attempted murder of his father? The relentless replay of the rally footage on the news only intensified our anxiety,” she continued.
“Each time we saw Donald’s bloodied face, I had to remind myself that I had actually just spoken to him, heard his voice, and knew that he was safe,” she added.
Mrs Trump described the immense relief she and Barron felt when Mr Trump returned to their Bedminster, New Jersey, home around 2am the following morning.
The next few days were “harrowing and surreal” for the family, knowing just how close the former president had come to being killed.
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