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In one of the many bizarre moments from Monday’s town hall event in Oaks, Pennsylvania, former President Donald Trump yet again said he “sleeps with” and “kisses” the immigration chart he credits with having saved his life during an assassination attempt earlier this summer.
Trump has said that he turned his head to look at the chart, narrowly avoiding the bullets fired by 20-year-old gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks on July 13 in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Trump called it his “all-time favorite chart” to cheers from supporters on Monday.
“That’s my favorite piece of paper anywhere in the world, I sleep with it every night, I kiss it,” he said, while pointing at a projected image of the chart.
Describing the moment of the shooting, he added: “If I didn’t turn to the right, I wouldn’t be here right now.”
At the time of the shooting, Trump was speaking about illegal immigration, claiming the chart showed the number of border crossings into the U.S. from Mexico during his time in office and during the administration of President Joe Biden.
The gunfire started as Trump turned to the right to look at the chart on a projection screen. The former president was struck in the ear but escaped with his life intact.
He has previously said that turning his head to look at the chart “probably saved my life” and that he loves it “more than I even love the police.”
Trump has also said that he’ll “sleep with that chart for the rest of my life.” It has since been shown during several campaign stops.
The chart was first introduced to Trump by Wisconsin Republican Senator Ron Johnson while he was fyling on the former’s president’s plane in April. The former president requested that Johnson share the chart, which initially used figures put together by the U.S. Border Patrol, with his communications staff. They then altered several items, such as annotations, descriptions, and the title, and it was used that very same day during a campaign event in Grand Rapids, Michigan, according to Time magazine.
“It’s obvious what the Biden administration has done in that chart. It shows what Trump had to deal with and how he successfully dealt with it,” Johnson said, according to the magazine. “And then it shows just the explosion of illegal immigration under President Biden and Vice President Harris.”
Time notes that the chart incorrectly states when Trump departed from the White House, suggesting that it happened in the spring of 2020 when the Covid-19 pandemic prompted travel restrictions and significantly lowered the number of crossings. Before the pandemic, the Trump administration also struggled to restrict the number of crossings.
It also leaves out the ex-president’s extremely controversial policy of seperating children from their parents at the US-Mexico border. California Democratic Representative Robert Garcia recently pointed out the issues with the chart in Congress, noting that border crossings increased following the loosening of Covid restrictions towards the end of Trump’s presidency.
Nontheless, Trump still used the chart during his speech at the Republican National Convention earlier this year.
“The last time I put up that chart, I never really got to look at it,” he said at the time. “But without that chart, I would not be here today.”
