Trump will deliver 'whole different speech' at RNC after shooting
A day after being grazed by a bullet in an attempted assassination, former president Donald Trump said he plans to take advantage of the moment and deliver a message of unity to meet the moment.
"The speech I was going to give on Thursday was going to be a humdinger," Trump said as he boarded his flight en route to the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. "Honestly, it's going to be a whole different speech now."
"It is a chance to bring the country together. I was given that chance," Trump added.
He said that many people from the political spectrum have called him over the past 24 hours and described the moment he turned his head on stage to look at the screen, which ultimately could have saved his life.
"That reality is just setting in," Trump said. "I rarely look away from the crowd. Had I not done that in that moment, well, we would not be talking today, would we?"
The world has now seen the image of the former president raising his fist with blood on his ear, and Trump said he did that because he wanted the country to know he was going to be OK. He wanted the Pennsylvania crowd to know that "America goes on, we go forward, that we are strong."
Trump recalled, "The energy coming from the people there in that moment, they just stood there; it's hard to describe what that felt like, but I knew the world was looking. I knew that history would judge this, and I knew I had to let them know we are OK."
-ABC News' Kelsey Walsh
