President Donald Trump on Thursday said he does not worry about another attempt on his life on the heels of what prosecutors say was a third assassination effort against him in the past two years by a gunman at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner on April 24.
"I don't think about it," Trump told a reporter when asked at the White House if he was concerned about another assassination attempt.
"If I did, I wouldn't be here," the president said.
Trump also said he was not inclined to wear a bulletproof vest, as some people have suggested.
"I don't know if i can handle being 20 pounds heavier," he quipped to laughs from administration officials and lawmakers who were in the Oval Office for his signing of an executive order to create a new type of retirement account for workers who do not have access to a 401(k) or another tax-advantaged workplace investment plan.
Trump's comments came hours after Cole Tomas Allen, who is charged with trying to assassinate the president at the journalists' dinner, appeared in federal court in Washington, D.C., for a detention hearing.
Allen, at the hearing, said he would not challenge being detained in jail without bond pending trial, although he reserved the right to revisit the issue later.
The 31-year-old California resident, who has worked as a tutor, was tackled by Secret Service officers at a security checkpoint in the Washington Hilton, a floor above where Trump and top officials in his administration were dining. Prosecutors said Allen was armed with a shotgun, a handgun, and several knives.
A Secret Service officer was shot during the confrontation, but was not seriously injured because the shot hit his protective vest, authorities have said.
It is not known if the officer was shot by Allen or by a fellow officer. Authorities have said that the question remains under investigation.
Trump, however, insisted on Thursday, "They said it wasn't friendly fire, it wasn't us."
Trump narrowly avoided being assassinated by gunman Thomas Crooks at a July 13, 2024, campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Crooks was killed by a Secret Service agent, but not before firing shots that struck Trump in his right ear, killing audience member Corey Comperatore, and seriously wounded two other people.
Two months after that incident, on Sept. 15, 2024, a Secret Service officer shot at another gunman who was hiding in shrubs along the perimeter of the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida.
That man, Ryan Routh, was convicted in Florida federal court on Sept. 23 of trying to assassinate Trump, and of other charges.
Routh is now serving a life sentence in prison.
