Incident on golf course
Trump: “I would have preferred to sink the last putt”
Updated on September 17, 2024Reading time: 2 minutes
Donald Trump appears to have narrowly escaped an assassination attempt. Now he describes the dramatic moment – and says that he would have preferred to finish his game of golf even after the shots.
According to his own words, the Republican US presidential candidate Donald Trump would have preferred to finish the golf match against his opponents despite the alleged attempted assassination attempt on him. “I would have loved to sink the last putt, but we decided that we had to get out of here,” said the 78-year-old, according to reports, in a conversation on the X Spaces platform. He praised the Secret Service, a witness and law enforcement for their quick action during the incident on Sunday afternoon (local time), in which bodyguards shot at the armed suspect.
Trump was playing golf with friends at his club in West Palm Beach, Florida, when a Secret Service security guard saw a gun barrel sticking out of the golf course's bush-covered fence. According to police, officers then quickly opened fire. The suspect, who was only a few hundred meters away from Trump, did not fire a shot. He fled in a car and was arrested a short time later on a nearby highway.
At first everything was very peaceful, Trump described his perception. “Suddenly we heard shots being fired into the air.” The Secret Service knew immediately that there were bullets. “There was no question that we were going to leave the golf course.” A witness took photos of the suspect's car, which also enabled the car to be located. “The civilian did a phenomenal job,” said Trump, who also praised the Secret Service for putting the man behind bars. “Hopefully he will be there for a long time. A dangerous person, a very, very dangerous person.”
Trump often plays golf at one of his clubs on weekends. On Sunday afternoon, the former US president, who wants to move into the White House for the Republicans for the second time in November, played with real estate investor and party donor Steve Witkoff.
