60 Minutes released his first clip from its sit down with Donald Trump, in which the president described the moments that shots were heard in the Washington Hilton ballroom during the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner and he and other top officials were rushed out.
Norah O’Donnell referred to video of the moment, captured by Getty Images, when first Vice President JD Vance is dragged from his seat by Secret Service agents, and then Trump is ushered away.
O’Donnell asked Trump, “You see the security moving quickly, within seconds, grabbing the vice president by his coat, lifting him up, bringing him out, then the counter assault comes in. It took 10 seconds for them to flank you, Mr. President, and then 20 seconds to get you out. It looked chaotic. At one point you were down. What was happening?”
Trump said, “Well, what happened is it was a little bit me. I wanted to see what was happening, and I wasn’t making it that easy for him. I wanted to see what was going on. And by that time, we started to realize maybe it was a bad problem, different kind of a problem, bad one. And different than what would be normal noise from a ballroom, which you hear all the time. And I was surrounded by great people, and I probably made them act a little bit more slowly. I said, ‘Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Let me see, wait a minute.’”
O’Donnell then asked him about a moment in the video in which Trump looks to have gone down to the ground.
What happened is, then I started walking with him. I turned, I started walking, and they said, ‘Please go down. Please go down on the floor. ‘So I went down, and first lady went down also. We were asked to go down by the agents as I was walking.”
O’Donnell said, “They wanted you almost to crawl.”
Trump said, “Pretty much. I was standing up, and then turned around the opposite direction and started pretty much walking out, pretty tall, a little bent over, because, you know, I’m not looking to be standing too tall but I was walking out. It was pretty about halfway there, and they said, ‘Please go down to the floor. Please go down to the floor.’ So I dropped to the floor. So did the first lady.”
The interview, taped at the White House on Sunday, will air on Sunday evening’s 60 Minutes.
