Nearly two years after President Donald Trump was shot during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, his daughter, Ivanka, opens up about the terrifying moment.
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While appearing on The Diary of a CEO podcast earlier this month, Ivanka got candid about the assassination attempt. She revealed that she was in Bedminster, New Jersey, when she heard “a lot of commotion” and saw the shooting on the TV out by a nearby pool.
Ivanka said her immediate reaction was to turn her children away, stating it was an “incredibly difficult” moment. However, she “knew” her father was OK as the Secret Service ushered him off the stage.
“I just knew that, like it wasn’t his time,” she explained. “So I was horrified, and I was scared. I was protective of my children, but I also didn’t believe that the worst possible outcome transpired. Thank God.”
Ivanka noted that she saw her father hours later, after he returned to Bedminster. She pointed out that he had been to a hospital following the incident.
After a brief pause, Ivanka said, “You can’t take things for granted in life.”
Continuing to reflect on other unfortunate moments that she’s experienced, including her mother’s death and her husband’s cancer scare, Ivanka said, “All of these challenges that remind you how finite and how precious every moment of this life we live are, make you realize you just can’t take anything for granted.”
“As you move through them, and God willing, you are able to, and we were so fortunate that day that this was a failed attempt to take his life,” she continued. “Not a realized one, you recommit to love and connection and to a recognition of how short our time here on this Earth is and how you got to value it.”
Ivanka Refuses to Allow Experiences to Impact Her Views on Life
While continuing the discussion, the podcast’s host, Steven Bartlett, asked how the experiences she’s had haven’t impacted her life views.
“Because I don’t allow it to,” she answered.
“Even for the person that shot at your father?” he then asked.
“There’s a lot of sickness there,” she answered. “And I think that forgiveness is a difficult thing in this regard.”
Ivanka returned to speaking about her father’s Butler assassination attempt.
“His living was a blessing, so I could look at what happened and be rightfully traumatized by the experience,” she continued. “And nobody could really argue with that, but you have to move through it, and on the opposite side of that is the fact that he is – that he didn’t die, that he is with us today.”
She then said, “My father is alive, and that is an extraordinary blessing for me as his daughter. In life, you have a choice, only in how you respond.”
Ivanka added that her father’s survival of the Butler attempt was a “miracle” and a “blessing.” She now focuses on that.