Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump vowed a serious response to countries potentially involved in assassination attempts against him or any American politician.
"If I were the president, I would inform the threatening country — in this case, Iran — that if you do anything to harm this person, we are going to blow your largest cities and the country itself to smithereens. We are going to blow it to smithereens," Trump said at a campaign event Wednesday in North Carolina.
Trump thanked Congress for its bipartisan push for legislation to boost his Secret Service protection.
Members of the Senate on Wednesday advanced legislation that will provide equal protection for major presidential candidates that is provided for a sitting president after a pair of assassination attempts against Trump. The legislation is expected to be signed by President Joe Biden.
But Trump promised that if elected, he'll take the action further.
"Right now we don't have that leadership or the necessary people, the necessary leaders," he said.
Trump was grazed in the ear by a bullet shot by Thomas Crooks at his Butler, Pennsylvania, rally in July, with the Secret Service shooting and killing the 20-year-old. Another suspect, Ryan Routh, who is accused of planning to assassinate Trump at his golf course in West Palm Beach, Florida, is being held on charges of attempted assassination.
Both of the suspects were U.S. citizens, and Trump acknowledged Wednesday that he doesn't know if they were connected with Iran.
"As you know, there have been two assassination attempts on my life that we know of, and they may or may not involve, but possibly do, Iran, but I don't really know,” Trump said at his campaign event Wednesday.
But he said that in the Butler case, the FBI "has been unable to open the three potentially foreign-based apps" on Crooks' phone.
In the Florida case, Routh had "six cell phones" but the FBI has likewise been unable to open the apps on them, Trump added.
The Trump campaign said Tuesday night the former president was briefed earlier in the day by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence concerning "real and specific threats from Iran to assassinate him in an effort to sow chaos in the United States."
"Intelligence officials have identified that these continued and coordinated attacks have heightened in the past few months, and law enforcement officials across all agencies are working to ensure President Trump is protected and the election is free from interference," Trump campaign communications director Steven Cheung said in a statement.
The DNI's office confirmed briefing the campaign but did not give further details about what had been said.
Trump posted on his Truth Social page early Wednesday that anyone trying to assassinate him or another candidate would have to have a "death wish" and that "moves were already made by Iran that didn't work out, but they will try again."
Trump pointed out at the rally that Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian is in the United States this week, where he has spoken to the United Nations General Assembly's annual gathering in New York City.
"We have large security forces guarding him, and yet they're threatening our former president and the leading candidate to become the next president of the United States," Trump said Wednesday.
Iran has rejected the accusations that it is plotting assassination attempts on the former president, or that it had hacked into his campaign's accounts to share details with President Joe Biden earlier this summer.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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