Former President Donald Trump brought the “computer genius” responsible for putting up the chart he turned to glance at moments before a would-be assassin took a shot at him up on stage Wednesday and credited her with saving his life.
“I love that chart. I’m going to sleep with that chart for the rest of my life,” Trump, 78, said at a campaign rally in Harrisburg, Pa., as the famous immigration chart was displayed to his right.
The Republican nominee for president then requested that the staffer who was handling the slideshow in Butler, Pa., on July 13 — when he was shot at by 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks — join him on stage.
“She should come out. Just tell her to come out here for a second,” Trump told his team. “Quick, quick, quick, quick, you got to get her.”
“She saved my life, in a sense,” the former president said as the young woman strolled toward the podium.
The shy staffer shook her head twice when Trump asked her if she wanted to speak.
“Hi,” the unnamed woman eventually said into the microphone before walking back to her post offstage.
“She’s a computer genius,” Trump asserted. “She saved my life.”
The former president noted that the chart documenting levels of illegal immigration over the years is used at “less than 20%” of his rallies and that it is “always on my left.”
“It would have been a perfect hit,” Trump said of the sniper’s bullet, had the chart been put up to his left in Butler instead of his right.
He also revealed that he usually has the chart pulled up at the end of his speeches and that the staffer told him she was “flabbergasted” that he called for it so early during his July 13 rally.
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) told Fox News earlier this month that he’s the one who gave Trump the life-saving chart.
“I’ve been developing it since 2014, adding to it every month,” Johnson told Fox News host Bret Baier, revealing that he first showed it to the former president on a plane trip.
“He liked it. He turned it over to his staff. They made a few changes in terms of graphics, but he used it that day and he’s been using it ever since,” the senator said.
“I’m happy to have been of service there … God works in mysterious ways,” Johnson added.
