Lititz, PA – Former President Donald Trump said during one rally on Sunday that he wouldn’t mind if someone shot through the media riser to kill him while he complained that the bulletproof glass positioned around him was ‘ridiculous’.
‘I have a piece of glass here, and I don’t have a piece of glass there. And I have this piece of glass here, but all we have here is fake news,” Trump said, pointing to the glass between him and the frontal riser where the press was located. “And to get me, someone would have to go through the fake news. And I don’t mind that so much. I don’t mind that.’
He repeatedly mocked the media and reporters during the meeting, calling the media “leeches.”
Trump’s comments came as he talked about the bulletproof glass surrounding him at his outdoor rallies, a measure introduced after the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvaniaon July 13 The bullet grazed Trump’s ear at the Butler meeting, and a spectator was killed. Secret Service snipers killed the shooter. Two months after Butler’s shooting, another man was arrested with a gun and charged with attempt to assassinate Trumpthis time on his golf course in Florida.
“The problem is, if you look at me tonight, you’ll say, ‘The president doesn’t look so good.’ How the hell do you look good? Look at the size of this sucker,” Trump said as he went to examine the thickness of the glass.
Trump later said there may have been a sniper in the field, harkening back to his first assassination attempt, noting that his supporters would be his glass.
“Glass here. There’s nothing there. It’s my glass. See? Those people are my glass,” Trump said, pointing to the crowd.
In a statement afterward, Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Trump, said Trump was trying to protect the media.