MILWAUKEE—Former President Donald Trump called Sen. Tommy Tuberville at 7 a.m. Monday, briefing the Alabama Republican about the aftermath of the assassination attempt Saturday evening and his selection of Sen. JD Vance of Ohio as his running mate.
“I talked to him this morning, he called me about 7 o’clock, and he said, ‘Well, how are you? I lost part of my ear,’” Tuberville told The Daily Signal in an interview Monday at the Republican National Convention.
Trump noted that the shooter managed only to hit his right ear and “said it was divine intervention,” Tuberville recalled.
“He never looks around hard right, he never looks at his signs, at the graphs,” the Alabama senator said. “He never does that, and for some reason he did that, and he got his head just right to where [the bullet] did nothing but catch part of his ear.”
“We talked a lot about the people who got killed behind him, the fireman,” Tuberville said, referring to Corey Comperatore.
Comperatore, a former local fire chief who reportedly dove on family members to protect them. The sniper who failed to kill Trump fatally shot Comperatore, 50.
“People don’t realize how compassionate President Trump is,” Tuberville added. “President Trump cares a lot about people. He’s helped people with their loans and done things that people don’t really know.”
Tuberville said he has “gotten to know President Trump quite well” and footage of the shooting shook him.
The Alabama Republican described the news as “very emotional” to him.
“To sit there and watch that, I thought at first he got stung by a bee or something; [he] grabs his ear and then he goes to ground,” the senator said.
Tuberville called the incident “devastating to our country and even that much more if it would have been worse.”
“We dodged disaster, we wouldn’t be here today if it would have been worse,” Tuberville added. “You just wonder why a 20-year-old kid would do something like that.”
The senator also said Trump spoke with him about selecting Ohio’s Vance as his running mate in the Nov. 5 election.
“The president this morning called me,” Tuberville said. “He doesn’t know JD as well as I do; I spend every day with him in the Senate.”
He called Vance a “great communicator” and a “huge addition” to the Trump ticket.
“He came in very early in the Senate and would stand up in our caucus meetings,” the Alabama senator said. “Here’s this rookie taking on [Senate Republican leaders John] Thune and [Mitch] McConnell. I was very impressed.”
Tuberville also spoke of Vance’s past, which Trump’s pick for vice president describes in his bestselling memoir “Hillbilly Elegy.”
“JD reached the American dream and JD was poor as a church mouse,” the Alabama senator said, noting that Vance just became “the first Marine ever to be a vice presidential candidate.”
