OAN Staff Blake Wolf
2:09 PM – Wednesday, July 9, 2025
White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles recounted her emotional experience during the pivotal moments of July 13, 2024, when President Donald Trump was shot in the ear, narrowly surviving a assassination attempt by 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks.
In a Wednesday interview on Miranda Devine’s “Pod Force One,” Wiles admitted that the moment Trump was shot in the ear, she had initially assumed that his life was taken.
“We were just crazy the minute he was hit,” Wiles stated, emphasizing that she believes Trump’s life was spared by divine intervention, as he had slightly turned his head to the side to look at an immigration chart at the same moment, which ultimately saved his life.
“So to have him ask for that chart, eight minutes in, and to have it come on the side that was opposite, caused him to look in a different direction and lift his head just a little because it was higher, and that just doesn’t happen because it happened,” she continued. “It happened because – I believe – God wanted him to live.”
Devine asked Wiles if she believed Trump was a goner at that moment, to which she responded: “I did. You think the worst. You cannot, it’s human, you can’t think otherwise. And when he stood up, I thought, ‘Oh my gosh.’”
“But it was a scary time, and it changed everything for us, the security became front and center, which it hadn’t been before,” she added. “Not to take away from the Secret Service, it’s just that they became on steroids then. And we couldn’t do outdoor rallies, which became sort of the hallmark for the campaign. We couldn’t go to buildings that had lots of windows.”
The seconds captured after the failed assassination attempt on President Trump became one of the most iconic images in American political history, as he defiantly raised his fist and shouted “Fight! Fight! Fight!” — even prompting prior Trump critics to express how “badass” the moment felt.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was one public figure who praised Trump’s response, calling his defiance “one of the most badass things I’ve ever seen in my life.”
The president has since hung up a painting of the iconic photo at the White House, which depicts him raising his fist with blood smeared across his face.
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