Donald Trump walked into the Republican National Convention on Monday behind a tranche of imposing bodyguards just days after he survived an attempt on his life in Pennsylvania.
The GOP candidate waved to the crowd in Milwaukee, pumping his fist while receiving rapturous applause. Trump showed off his bandaged ear, hurt when he was grazed by an assassin’s bullet on Saturday.
Trump is not due to speak at the convention until Thursday but traveled to Wisconsin on Sunday, 24 hours after the assassination attempt.
Trump, who stands at 6-foot-3, was surrounded by a dozen or so equally burly bodyguards as he made his entrance. There had been widespread criticism by conservative figures on X about the ex-president’s security detail.
On Monday, Trump announced Ohio Senator JD Vance, who once compared the nominee to Adolf Hitler, would be his running mate in November’s election.
Trump walking triumphantly into the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee on Monday
Video footage showed the 6-foot-3 president surrounded by equally burly security
On Saturday afternoon, Crooks was able to slip onto a rooftop location 150 yards from the stage where Trump was speaking in Butler, Pennsylvania. He then began firing an AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle, purchased by his father, officials said.
The Secret Service, responsible for protecting presidents and former presidents, went on the defensive on Monday against criticism of its failure to detect the gunman.
‘Secret Service personnel on the ground moved quickly during the incident, with our counter sniper team neutralizing the shooter and our agents implementing protective measures to ensure the safety of former president Donald Trump,’ Kimberly Cheatle, the Secret Service director, said in a statement.
Biden ordered an independent of how the gunman, who was shot dead by agents moments after opening fire, could have come so close to killing or severely wounding Trump despite the heavy security provided by the agency.
The president has also ordered the Secret Service to begin a protection detail of independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
On Monday, Trump announced that Ohio Senator JD Vance would be his running mate
Thomas Matthew Crooks, the 20-year-old would-be assassin who shot Donald Trump, was once rejected from his high school rifle club and considered a danger
Kennedy is a longshot to win Electoral College votes, much less the presidency. But his campaign events have drawn large crowds of supporters and people interested in his message.
His campaign has been urging the president to provide him with Secret Service protection for months, and has sent multiple requests after various incidents.
In October, a man was arrested after trespassing twice in one day at Kennedy’s Los Angeles home, and a month earlier, an armed man accused of impersonating a federal officer was taken into custody outside a Kennedy campaign event.
The FBI has taken the lead in an investigation of the shooting.
Trump flew to Milwaukee on Sunday, 24 after the assassination attempt.
Trump pumped his fist in the air several times and appeared to mouth the words ‘Fight! Fight! Fight!’ as he descended the stairs from his plane.
In an interview during the trip, he said the realization that he came so close to being killed was sobering.
‘That reality is just setting in,’ Trump was quoted as saying by the Washington Examiner. ‘I rarely look away from the crowd. Had I not done that in that moment, well, we would not be talking today, would we?’
‘I want to try to unite our country,’ the New York Post reported Trump saying during the flight. ‘But I don’t know if that’s possible. People are very divided