BURSTPresident Trump said his ear was "bleeding like a b----" after he was shot during an attempted assassination at a campaign rally in Butler, Pa., last July.
The recently released excerpt of the book “2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America" details the day Trump was shot at by 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks. Crooks used an AR-style rifle to aim at Trump during the rally, grazing him in the ear with a bullet.
“It was bleeding like a b----” Trump said in an interview for the book. “They thought I had four or five bullets in me because there was so much blood.”
A rally attendee was killed and two others were injured before a sniper shot and killed Crooks.
The book excerpt was first published in The Washington Post.
Before the incident, Trump was speaking to the Pennsylvania crowd about a graphic on border crossings, misleadingly labeled to suggest that border crossings fell because of Trump’s policies, but it was actually from the coronavirus pandemic, the excerpt reads.
“Look what happened to our country,” he said. “Take a look what happened —.”
Trump's speech was interrupted when a popping noise rang out at 6:11 p.m.
The president felt a sting on his right ear, like "the world’s largest mosquito," the book details.
After Trump was taken to the emergency room, where he refused to take a stretcher because he "didn’t want the visual," members of Trump's team, including Susie Wiles, Steven Cheung and Dan Scavino, waited in suspense. Later, the three were escorted into Trump's hospital room, where he was sitting up in his suit, the book noting there was "blood everywhere."
Trump insisted that he obtain the CT scan film because he "felt like he needed it," the book reads. However, the doctor said that was not done anymore, but offered to write him a report.
“I want the film,” he said again, according to the book.
When asked why he needed the film after the doctor left to get a copy of the image, Trump said it's "like an IQ test."
“They tell you that your brain is good, so I just want to have that," Trump reportedly said.
"Trump kept talking about the shooting. He couldn’t believe it. He seemed to want to relive it over and over," the book details.
After talking to various notable officials and figures about the shooting, including then-President Biden, Trump left the hospital for the airport to head home, still in the same suit he was shot in, the excerpt states.