Former President Donald Trump compared his gunshot wound to the “world’s largest mosquito” and appeared to echo independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy’s suspicions about vaccines in a leaked video of a phone call between the two men after an attempt on the former president’s life.
The video, posted Tuesday on X by Mr. Kennedy’s son, features Mr. Trump recounting his conversation with President Biden after the shooting, the former president agreeing with Mr. Kennedy’s stance on vaccines and the Republican nominee alluding to a possible team-up with Mr. Kennedy.
In the video, Mr. Kennedy can be seen in a dimly lit room intently listening to Mr. Trump on speakerphone, occasionally saying “yeah,” throughout the 1-minute-and-40-second video.
Mr. Trump recalled his conversation with Mr. Biden after Saturday’s shooting in Pennsylvania, where he was injured and a rallygoer was killed, and noted that the president asked him “how did you choose to move to the right?”
The former president jokingly said he was turning his head to point at a chart that depicted the numbers of migrants who have entered the country illegally since Mr. Biden took office, and in that instant, the bullet grazed his ear.
“I just turned my head to show the chart,” Mr. Trump said. “It felt like a giant, like the world’s largest mosquito, and it was, it was a bullet.
“What do they call it, an AR-15 or something?” he said. “That’s a big gun. Those are pretty tough guns, right?”
Mr. Trump and Mr. Kennedy met later Monday at the Republican National Convention after the call. On the video, Mr. Trump can be heard saying he would “love” if Mr. Kennedy would “do something” with his campaign and telling the independent candidate “it would be so good for you, so big for you.”
Mr. Trump said,” We’re going to win.”
Mr. Kennedy apologized for the leaked video on X, posting that he was “mortified” that the conversation became public.
“When President Trump called me, I was taping with an in-house videographer. I should have ordered the videographer to stop recording immediately,” Mr. Kennedy said.
But his son, who posted the video, said he is a “firm believer” that the type of conversation between his father and Mr. Trump “should be had in public.”
“Here’s Trump giving his real opinion to my dad about vaccinating kids — this was the day after the assassination attempt,” he said.
Indeed, the former president appeared to agree with Mr. Kennedy’s conspiracy theories about vaccines, specifically that vaccination leads to autism, and told him that there is “something wrong with the whole system.”
“When you feed a baby, Bobby, a vaccination that is like 38 different vaccines, and it looks like it’s meant for a horse, not a, you know, 10-pound or 20-pound baby,” he said.
“And then you see the baby all of a sudden starting to change radically. I’ve seen it too many times,” Mr. Trump said. “And then you hear that it doesn’t have an impact.”
• Alex Miller can be reached at amiller@washingtontimes.com.
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