‘Not supposed to be here’: Trump offers dramatic account of assassination attempt in speech to RNC

MILWAUKEE — Donald Trump describes how he narrowly survived an attempt on his life, telling a rapt audience at the Republican National Convention in his first speech since the attack that he was only there “by the grace of Almighty God.”

“I heard a loud whizzing sound and felt something hit me really, really hard on my right ear,” he says in Milwaukee, a thick bandage still covering his ear. “I said to myself, ‘Wow, what was that? It can only be a bullet.”

When he tells the crowd that he was “not supposed to be here,” the crowd chants back, “Yes you are!” With photos of a bloodied Trump showing on screens behind him, Trump praises the Secret Service agents that rushed to his side and pays tribute to the volunteer firefighter who was killed, Corey Comperatore, kissing his fire helmet.

The former president struck an unusually conciliatory tone during the speech’s opening moments, when he formally accepted the party’s presidential nomination.

“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,” he said, in a marked shift in tenor for the typically bellicose former president.

But he swiftly pivoted to well-worn attacks on the Biden administration, claiming without evidence that his criminal indictments are politically motivated efforts to prevent his election.

The speech caps a four-day event in which he was greeted with adulation by a party that now appears entirely in his thrall.