“The Most American Picture I’ve Ever Seen”: Inside Donald Trump’s Hospital Room After Assassination Attempt

Donald Trump’s motorcade snaked toward a private hangar at West Palm Beach International airport. Trump Force One was fueled up and ready to go. The former president had a rally to get to.

It had been just over two weeks since the debate. In that time, it was Joe Biden—not Trump—who was sucking up all the media’s attention for a change. After his debate debacle, the president was facing pressure from within his party to withdraw from the race and make way for another candidate. Who that candidate was didn’t really matter to the Democratic big-wigs who wanted Biden gone. They just needed someone else. Biden was fried, they argued, and just couldn’t beat Trump. Biden’s poll numbers had continued to nose-dive after the debate, and it turned out that sinking Trump through the courtroom wasn’t so easy. Trump’s sentencing in the hush money case had been postponed until September. And the Supreme Court had ruled that Trump had immunity from some actions he took as president, likely further dragging out Jack Smith’s January 6 case. Delay. Delay. Delay.

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For all the good news, Trump felt slighted. He’d prepared for the debate and had done well, yet the media was ignoring that and focusing on Biden’s catastrophe. The lieutenants tried to soothe him. After pro-Trump talking heads went on cable TV and praised the ex-president for his performance, aides clipped their appearances and made sure the boss saw them.

“No one will ever give me credit,” Trump said privately.

Trump was about to seize back the attention he craved. The Republican National Convention was the following week in Milwaukee. Trump was planning to use the event to unveil his vice presidential pick, and the press had spent months guessing about who that might be. North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum? Maybe Florida Senator Marco Rubio? Ohio Senator JD Vance? Trump—always the showman—had been stoking the intrigue for months. He loved it.

In terms of drama, Trump’s rally that evening in Butler, Pennsylvania wasn’t expected to offer much. It would be like any other MAGA rally. He’d walk onstage to Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA,” before launching into a speech decrying Biden’s handling of inflation and accusing him of allowing immigrants to flow into the country. Butler wasn’t far from the Ohio border, and there had been speculation Trump would announce Vance as his VP nominee at the rally. Networks wanted to send a bunch of people in case Trump did a big reveal. But the campaign waved reporters off. Not happening, the campaign said. We’ll see you in Milwaukee.

That didn’t mean the trip was unimportant. Trump was planning to spend plenty of time in Pennsylvania, a state that could determine the outcome of the election. Trump needed to maximize votes from places like Butler County, which backed him over Biden by a two-to-one margin in 2020. Butler—heavily white, heavily agricultural, heavily conservative—was Trump Country. As Trump Force One took off from Palm Beach International Airport, thousands of fans were already waiting in Butler’s 90-degree heat for him to arrive, some with umbrellas to give them shade from the summer sun. They had a Saturday evening date with the ex-president on the Butler Farm Show Grounds.

Trump’s traveling entourage that evening was smaller than usual. Susie Wiles, Steven Cheung, Dan Scavino, Walt Nauta, Margo Martin, Justin Caporale and Ross Worthington, a top speechwriter, were among those who boarded the flight, as did more than a half-dozen Secret Service agents. The flight to Butler was a quick one, a bit over an hour. During the flight, Trump talked about his looming VP pick, went over his speech and watched a feed of the rally’s kickoff speakers. Senate candidate David McCormick spoke, as did Army veteran Sean Parnell and several members of Congress.

“I’ll say it before and I’ll say it again,” Congressman Dan Meuser said to cheers. “There’s nothing like a Trump rally.”

When they deplaned at the Pittsburgh International Airport, Trump got into a SUV for the 35-mile drive to Butler. His aides scattered into other cars. Trump was due to have an interview with conservative writer Salena Zito before taking the stage, and take some photos—“clicks” as they were known internally—with supporters. But when Trump got to the rally site, he was running late. Not wanting to keep the rally-goers waiting, the campaign told Zito she would do the interview after Trump finished speaking.

After the clicks, Trump made his way to a white tent positioned about 30 feet to the right of the stage which was functioning as an operations center.

“How many people do you think are out there?” Trump, always looking to measure his crowd size, asked Cheung, the campaign’s top spokesman.

“It’s actually a pretty big crowd,” the aide said. “I would say around 30,000 to 35,000.”

“I can see it,” Trump said. “Probably closer to 40,000.”

“Okay, I’ll tell reporters that,” Cheung said. “We’re all good.”

A little after 6 pm, Trump took the stage to “God Bless the USA.” Scavino, a senior adviser, and aide Margo Martin left the tent to record some video for social media. Worthington stayed back with the teleprompter operator. Cheung also hung back in the tent, as did Wiles.

Trump opened by boasting about his “big, big beautiful crowd.” A few minutes into the speech, he began talking about how the influx of illegal immigrants had worsened under Biden. “We have millions and millions of people in our country that shouldn’t be here, dangerous people. Criminals, we have criminals. We have drug dealers.” Trump said. He pointed to a big screen TV above the stands showing a graph illustrating the spike.

Then there was the sound of a crackle. Then another. Then another. Cheung, who’d been catching up on unread emails and text messages, thought it was firecrackers. Then he looked at a monitor. Trump was grabbing his ear and there was blood.

Wiles screamed.

“Everyone get down!”

Chris LaCivita always thought they would try to kill Trump. Who “they” were wasn’t clear. But he believed there were ominous, shadowy forces who wanted to take out the former president. LaCivita, who was managing the campaign alongside Wiles, didn’t bring it up with the boss. Hell no. That was the job of the Secret Service. But it was something he thought about. LaCivita wasn’t alone. During the White House years, Trumpians buzzed about a “Deep State” of federal bureaucrats determined to stop him from pursuing his agenda. Now that he was out of office, people like Tucker Carlson worried “they” would assassinate him.

“Are you worried they’re going to try to kill you?” Carlson asked Trump point blank in an August 2023 interview on his podcast. “Why wouldn’t they try to kill you, honestly?”

It wasn’t just the Deep State in the minds of the Trumpers. There were also the Iranians. Trump lieutenants, his security encourage, and the former president himself were well aware the country’s leaders wanted to kill Trump in retaliation for his January 2020 assassination of Iranian military officer Qasem Soleimani. The threat had lingered since Trump left the White House.

There were plenty of reasons for concern for Trump’s safety. After Trump left the White House and was ensconced at Mar-a-Lago, aides found his security apparatus lacking. The club was like a fishbowl, crawling with all kinds of visitors from God knows where. People who went to Mar-Lago to meet with Trump got wanded by the Secret Service. But others often got in unchecked. And given that Trump many times spent the dinner hour at his open-air patio, someone could simply walk up to him with a gun. After Ye and Nicholas Fuentes were able to make it through the gates, the looseness of the club’s security protocols burst into public view.

As Trump’s campaign kicked into gear, the security failures continued—and they weren’t limited to Mar-a-Lago. When Trump visited a Washington courthouse on August 3, 2023 for his arraignment in the Capitol riot case, Secret Service and the U.S. Marshals had neglected to shut off the public’s access to the elevator Trump was using, leaving him exposed to whoever was in the building. Trump’s elevator stopped at each floor, and after the door opened onlookers gawked.

“Holy shit! It’s fucking Trump!” one person said.

Total freakshow, an aide with Trump in the elevator thought.

Things weren’t better on the four-mile ride back to Reagan National Airport, when police didn’t clear the roads for Trump’s motorcade. As the black SUVs barreled out of the city and onto the George Washington Memorial Parkway, it was clear there was a problem. Rush-hour drivers had clogged the rain-soaked roads and were weaving in and out of the same lanes as Trump’s vehicle. At one point, an accident was averted when a car cut in front of a van transporting the press pool, causing the van’s driver to slam the brakes. Trump could get rammed, thought one member of Trump’s entourage.

Trump had a smaller security detail than when he was in the White House, as was typical for ex-presidents. But Trump was embracing a post-presidential life that was far more public than Barack Obama or George W. Bush before him. The Service was feeling the strain. Later in August, Trump campaigned at the Iowa State Fair. For the Service, it was a nightmare. They had initially planned to have Trump walk down the fair’s main street. But they realized it would be clogged with people, many of whom would be only lightly screened by the fair’s flimsy magnetometers. Iowa was an open-carry state, and who knew what someone might have in their bag. A knife? A gun? A bomb? The campaign eventually settled on a plan where Trump would make three appearances in different locations, each of which would be in a confined space where attendees would be extensively searched. The Iowa trip caused a freak-out within the Service, which stretched to meet the demands.

The Service saw danger whenever Trump threw himself into chaotic environments. During a return visit to Iowa the next month, Trump had visited a frat house where he checked out a barbeque pit and tossed footballs to the college bros, some of whom were catcalling one of Trump’s assistants. The day before, agents had visited the house for a walk-through and discovered dozens of guns inside. You’re going to have to put those away, the agents told the kids. You can’t have them around when Trump comes.

After visiting the frat house, Trump was to watch a college football game in a private suite. Rather than taking a more protected route to get to his box, Trump decided to wade through a throng of screaming fans. It was a crazy scene. Students in front of him, behind him and on the balcony above were screaming at him, flashing him thumbs up and chanting “USA! USA!” Trump loved it, fed off it, and wasn’t going to let anyone get in his way. A back-and-forth with his detail ensued.

“I’m going over here,” Trump told one of his agents.

“No, sir, we’re going here,” the agent told Trump, trying in vain to divert him.

“No, I’m going here,” Trump said.

Trump, though, loved his Service guys. He’d sometimes invite them to sit with him in the front of the plane and watch combat sports, and have the flight attendant serve them dinner and sodas. Sean Curran, Trump’s detail lead, had the respect of the Trump team. Curran was a tough, serious dude who didn’t seem to smile much – an “OG,” in the words of one Trump aide. Trump considered Curran a friend. The two spent countless hours together, from the golf course to the motorcade. Within Trump’s inner circle, there were rumors Curran could be in line for a staff job in a future Trump White House.

“We love Sean,” Wiles would say.

As the campaign wore on, tensions between the Trump lieutenants—and members of his detail—and the Secret Service leadership in Washington began to bubble. The Trump campaign and Curran wanted more assets; the threat level surrounding Trump, they believed, was increasing. But the agency, which had been struggling with staffing shortages, denied some of the requests. As the Republican convention neared, the Trumpians were asking for the perimeter around the site to be expanded, so protesters couldn’t get so close to attendees. Secret Service leadership in Washington insisted the plan they already had was fine.

LaCivita was at the Trade hotel in Milwaukee on the evening of July 13, helping to get ready for the convention. It had been a busy few days, and there was still a lot of work to do. LaCivita had just finished editing videos and had Trump’s rally playing in the background, though he wasn’t fully paying attention. At one point, he got a call from his daughter, Victoria, who was also working on the campaign.

“Dad,” she said, “something has happened to the president.”

The bullets came flying from Trump’s right. He pressed his hand to his ear, then looked down at it, like he had been stung by a bee. Trump turned his head to the right at the last moment; had he not, it was likely the bullet would have pierced his skull and almost certainly killed him. As Trump ducked behind the podium, Secret Service agents piled on top of him. Curran came in from the right, throwing himself onto the former president to shield him.

It was chaos. Rally-goers behind Trump—some of whom just moments before were holding placards reading, “Joe Biden: You’re Fired!”—cowered. The agents were talking to one another, trying to figure out what was next.

“What are we doing? What are we doing?”

“On three, on you. Move! Move!”

“Hawkeye’s here,” said one, as a helmeted officer with a submachine gun patrolled the front of the stage.

About 40 seconds after the first shot was fired, one of them could be heard saying: “Shooter’s down.”

“Are we good to move?”

“We’re clear! We’re clear!”

The agents began lifting Trump up, forming a circle around him.

“Let me get my shoes,” Trump said.

Trump’s shoes had slipped off during the maelstrom. The former president had as of late been wearing shoes made by the Swiss manufacturer Bally. While the shoes were designed to be tied on, Trump had turned them into slip-ons.

Trump appeared to search for them, and then stood up, looking as if he were in shock. Then, as his agents tried to maneuver him off the stage, he peered out between them at the crowd. He pumped his fist three times and said, “Fight, fight, fight.” The audience erupted.

The moment embodied the heart of Trump’s comeback campaign, and underscored the spirit of his appeal to his diehard fans. For the last 20 months, Trump had cast himself as the fighter who was clawing his way back to power from the forces who, in the minds of him and his supporters, had unjustly taken it away from him. To his backers, Trump was the fighter who was looking to dismantle the system that had failed them.

The detail guided Trump offstage, his typically immaculately-sprayed gold hair out of place and his bloodied MAGA hat in hand. Descending the stairs, he wrapped his arms around an agent to his right. The loyal Curran was on his left. Once they got to the bottom, it took the agents another 20 seconds to get Trump into his SUV. Before getting in, he raised his arm once more.

Trump’s motorcade set off to Butler Memorial Hospital, eight miles away. The lieutenants had sprinted to the SUVs, but Cheung couldn’t find his car. Wiles rolled her window down.

“Just get in my car,” she said.

Cheung got in the passenger’s seat. Wiles, in the backseat with Scavino, got a call from LaCivita.

“How bad is it?” he asked.

“I just don’t know,” she said.

After pulling up to the hospital, Wiles, Cheung, Scavino and Nauta, Trump’s body man, headed for the emergency room. The building was going into lockdown. Secret Service agents had their long guns out; nurses were wheeling patients out of units so they could create a secure wing for Trump. Hospital workers then stretchered the former president through the emergency room doors. Trump’s bloody hat, suit jacket and white collared shirt were off; he was only in an undershirt and suit pants. His shoes, in the end, had been left onstage; they would be retrieved by a production worker and brought to the hospital later in the evening.

“This is going to make some news,” Trump told his team.

After doctors took Trump into a room, the Service examined the lieutenants to ensure they weren’t wounded. So many texts and calls were coming through, their phones were melting down. Members of the media were already asking if they could land the first interview with Trump. Others were asking what hospital they were at so they could send reporters, cameramen and photographers to stake it out. Misinformation was flying. One news outlet had reached out to Cheung saying they were going to report that Trump had passed away at the hospital. Cheung, deciding he needed to say something publicly before things got out of hand, hammered out a statement on his phone saying Trump was “fine.” After showing it to Wiles and Scavino, he hit send.

The doctors wheeled Trump out of his room to get a CT scan for a possible concussion. The test came back clean, and Trump wanted the records.

“Can you give me a copy of these?” Trump asked a nurse. “Because I want to make sure I can show reporters that my cognitive function is 100 percent. You can’t say the same about Joe Biden.”

“We can put it on a CD for you,” the nurse said.

“OK,” he said. “We’ll release that at a later date.”

Biden was about to address the nation about the shooting. Trump was back in his hospital room, and there was no TV. Cheung pulled up a feed from CNN on his phone and they watched. After the president was done, Trump asked to see some of the pictures that had been taken during the attack. One, from the New York Times’s Doug Mills, showed a bullet whizzing by Trump’s head. Another, by the Associated Press’s Evan Vucci, depicted a bloodied Trump defiantly raising his fist, with the American flag behind him.

“Wow, that’s iconic,” Trump said. “That’s the most American picture I’ve ever seen.”

Before being discharged, Trump was given back his bloodied clothes. (“This is going into the museum,” he said.) The Secret Service had a call to make: Where would Trump go next? Investigators were still in the early stages of figuring out what had happened. By this point, law enforcement had ID’d a shooter: Thomas Matthews Crooks, a 20-year-old man from Bethel Park, Pennsylvania. It wasn’t yet clear if he was part of a larger plot and what the threat level was. The question now was how to get Trump home safely.

Curran offered three options. First was Bedminister, Trump’s New Jersey golf club. But it was summer, and the club was full of people. Mar-a-Lago was another option. But that would be a longer flight, and being in the air for an extended period of time could put him at risk in the event there was a broader conspiracy and someone was looking to shoot the easily-identifiable Trump Force One down. Then there was Milwaukee, where Trump was due to arrive on Sunday for the start of the convention. While there were plenty of law enforcement assets in the city, officials didn’t think it would be sufficiently secured until the following morning. The Secret Service settled on flying back to Bedminister, and would kick out the club’s guests that evening before Trump arrived.

Trump and his crew set off for the hour-long drive to the Pittsburgh airport. When they got there, Service officials said they needed time to sweep the plane and make sure someone hadn’t shot at it or there wasn’t a bomb planted onboard. So Trump, Wiles, Cheung and Scavino huddled in a conference room at a private terminal and watched Fox News. After an hour, they got on the plane for the flight to Newark. Pizza was served.

By the time Trump pulled up at his cottage in Bedminster it was after midnight. Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump were waiting for him. After stepping out of his SUV, he gave his daughter a long hug.

Trump had survived an assassination attempt by mere inches. His convention was a day away. And he had 36 hours to make one of his biggest decisions yet: Who he would pick for VP.

Excerpted from REVENGE: The Inside Story of Trump’s Return to Power by Alex Isenstadt. Reprinted with permission of Grand Central Publishing, a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc., New York, N.Y., U.S.A. All rights reserved.