EXCLUSIVE: MILWAUKEE — House Majority Leader Steve Scalise plans to use his Republican National Convention speech Tuesday night to talk about the “warm and compassionate person Donald Trump is” while reflecting on his own near-death experience at the hands of a would-be assassin in 2017, Fox News Digital has learned.
The Louisiana Republican sat down for an interview with Fox News Digital on the sidelines of the Republican National Convention on Tuesday, just hours before he is set to address the convention.
Scalise recalled his immediate reaction to learning of the assassination attempt on former President Trump on Saturday night at his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
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“I didn’t know how badly President Trump was hit, you know, and you saw him go down, and even when he got up, you just don’t know,” Scalise said. “I know what I went through, and when you’re hit, your body just kind of shuts down, so you don’t even know how bad you are, and your body kind of tricks you to hold you together, so you can be in a lot worse shape.”
“I was really worried about him until I heard later that he actually went to the hospital and got checked out and was OK,” Scalise said.
But the assassination attempt brought back a lot of “emotions” for Scalise, who was shot at a congressional baseball practice in 2017.
“You saw the raw video footage with the audio of the ‘pop, pop’ of the shots, and they sounded eerily similar to what I experienced, and the term ‘shooter down’ was the same thing they said on the ball field that day, so, you know, a lot of similarities,” Scalise told Fox News Digital.
“But luckily for both of us, I think God was on the ball field – God had divine providence, Scalise said. “That tilt of the head is all it took to save President Trump’s life. But we all know how close he came.”
Scalise added, “Thank God he is still with us because our country needs him and our country did not need something devastating like that.”
Scalise said the shooting “reminds us how fragile life can be and how important it is that protections are in place.”
“You can never let your guard down,” he said.
After Scalise was shot by a gunman in 2017 at the congressional baseball practice, he spent three and a half months in the hospital. Scalise went into a coma and was “fighting for his life.”
“That was a lot of introspection for me of what is important in life, and I think you’re already seeing that from President Trump,” Scalise said. “You’ve seen a different tone from him in the last couple of days. I think he realizes that he was within an inch of his life and realizes how precious life can be.”
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Scalise said he thinks Americans who “may have written him off look at him completely different now.”
“And I hope they do, because I know President Trump personally. He came to the hospital the night I was shot and for weeks would call my wife just to check in on her and see how the kids were doing,” he said. “He is a caring, caring person, and the media does not portray him that way, yet he has so much compassion. He was wonderful to me and wonderful to my family at our lowest point.”
Scalise said his story about Trump’s compassion is one that “is repeated.”
“You hear that kind of story from other people who know President Trump and know the kind of person he is,” Scalise said. “I hope more people get to see that side of him, because too often the caricature that is played by the folks that hate him, it is just sad to see how evil some of the hatred against him is, and I’ve called for that to stop.”
Scalise said comparisons to “Hitler” and dark rhetoric about the president is “foolishness and lies.”
“It’s not just elected officials – late-night talk show hosts spend their whole monologue just trashing Donald Trump, and it just takes one unhinged person to act on it,” Scalise said. “Everybody who has said those kinds of things needs to look in the mirror. The personal attacks on him have been so relentless for years, unlike anything any other elected official has seen.”
Scalise added, “And it needs to stop.”
Scalise is set to address that in his RNC Convention speech Tuesday night.
“You know, when I wrote the speech a few weeks ago, I wanted to focus on the contrast of policy – talk about border policy, energy security, the economic health of our country and how to get our country moving again and back on track; I’m still going to do that,” Scalise said. “But we are blessed that President Trump is OK, and I want to talk about the kind of person he is. I just want to add a little bit of color in there to give people the reminder of the kind of warm and compassionate person that Donald Trump is.”
He added, “That story doesn’t get told enough.”
Meanwhile, Scalise said President Biden’s words about the attempt on Trump’s life “ring hollow when they’re not followed by actions.”
“If you want to be a leader, you know, and President Trump’s a leader. President Biden’s the leader of the free world, but you’ve got to lead by example,” Scalise said. “You can’t say you want to be a unifier and then go and say you want to put your opponent in the crosshairs.”
Scalise said Biden should “own up to it,” referring to those comments and to rhetoric about Trump.
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“At some point, just look in the mirror and say, ‘You know what, I shouldn’t have said that, and I’m going to stop saying it, even more importantly,'” Scalise said. “And I still haven’t heard that from President Biden.”
Scalise said it seems like Biden wants to “have the opportunity to take the cheap shots” when he instead should focus on policy differences.
“It starts at the top. You want to be a unifier? Start unifying and disavow the things that not just other people did, disavow the things you’ve done and stop doing those things,” Scalise said. “And I still don’t see that tone change yet. We’re going to be watching closely, but President Biden needs to start at the top with himself.”
Scalise also said the House of Representatives will investigate the security failures at Trump’s rally that led to the assassination attempt.
“We need to start getting answers, and I’ve been incredibly disappointed from the lack of candor I’ve seen from the head of the Secret Service,” Scalise said, adding that Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle has been “avoiding any communication with the public for days.”
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“When you even heard local law enforcement giving press conferences, you heard nothing from the head of the Secret Service. Lately, she’s been trying to blame other people. She recently said that it was the slope of the building that created too many challenges to put people up there. Well, a 20-year-old kid was able to climb up there and maneuver it just fine,” Scalise said. “Those are excuses that ring hollow.”
Scalise said House lawmakers are questioning Cheatle’s ability to do her job and suggesting that there is someone “more fit to be the head of the Secret Service.”
“They’ve got an incredibly important job. I don’t care what their party affiliation is. I want somebody competent to do the job,” Scalise said. “And if they’re not, you need to hold people accountable and move on and get somebody who’s capable of doing it.”
Scalise said the House will hold hearings focused on “getting serious answers about what really happened.”
“How could a 20-year-old kid get 140 feet (sic) away from the president of the United States, the former president of the United States, who’s a leading candidate for president, by the way, for this November? I mean, this is inexcusable, and it happened on her watch,” he said.
