Vice presidential candidate JD Vance said he initially thought Trump had been killed at the infamous rally in July, saying his first response was to guard his family.
Vice presidential candidate JD Vance told Joe Rogan that he felt compelled to guard his family immediately after the first assassination attempt on former President Trump.
Vance appeared as a guest on an episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience” released Thursday where he recalled his initial reaction to the assassination attempt against Trump during a July 13 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. The Ohio senator was announced as Trump’s VP pick two days later.
“I go back home to Ohio, he gets shot, you know, the initial reaction was, I actually thought they had killed him, because when you first see the video, he grabs his ear, and then he goes down, and I’m like, ‘Oh my God, they just killed him,’ and I was so pissed,” Vance said.
“But then I go into like fight-or-flight mode. With my kids, I’m like, you know, ‘Alright kids’ – We’re at a mini-golf place in Cincinnati, Ohio. I grab my kids up, throw them in the car, go home, and load all my guns, and basically stand like a sentry at our front door and that was my- that was sort of my action to it,” he said.
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The pair discussed the attempted assassin, with both agreeing this was a uniquely “bizarre” case. Vance noted how strange it was that the shooter was allowed to get so close.
“An AR-15 from 140 yards away is a potshot,” Vance said, later adding, “It is shocking that [Trump’s] alive.”
“I’m a person of faith, but I think it’s a genuine miracle that that guy didn’t kill him,” Vance continued. “But how did he get so close? There’s a lot of really big questions that we should be asking.”
He recalled how people were yelling and trying to warn local law enforcement that there was a person on the roof.
“Nobody responded to it, and it’s- the whole thing is very fishy to me,” Vance said. “And I hope that we win and then get to the bottom of it, because I think somebody clearly screwed up.”
“It doesn’t seem like ‘just screwed up,’” the podcast host said. “Like, the excuse that the lady from the Secret Service had that they couldn’t put snipers on the roof because the roof was sloped? Like, all of it is bananas.”
“That’s ridiculous, that’s ridiculous,” Vance agreed.
