(Ken Silva, Headline USA) The July 13, 2024, assassination attempt against Donald Trump sent shockwaves through the country. But according to a new book that covers the incident, Trump himself was as cool as a cucumber after a bullet came within millimeters of ending his life.
The book, Retribution: Donald Trump and the Campaign That Changed America, covers the July 13 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania from the morning of that event through when Trump was taken to the local hospital.
At the Butler Memorial Hospital, Trump was reportedly more concerned about the optics than his health.
Another funny factoid I didn't know. Trump had a CT scan after being shot to test for a concussion. He wanted to release the results to prove his brain was better than Biden's. LOL pic.twitter.com/qNmr9RXtPI
— Ken Silva (@JD_Cashless) November 7, 2025
“How is it playing on TV? We’re going to make some big news, aren’t we?” he said at one point, according to the book.
And when he saw his own photo, Trump’s mood became downright upbeat. “That’s the most American photo I have ever seen,” he said.
The then-presidential candidate even joked that his campaign should release the results of a CT scan he received to test for a concussion, so that the public could see how much better his brain was than then-President Joe Biden’s, according to the book.
Retribution, written by ABC News reporter Jon Karl, also reveals new information about the event itself, including the absence of bomb-sniffing dogs at the entrances.
However, the book also contained misinformation. Most egregiously, Karl wrote that a Secret Service counter-sniper stopped Thomas Crooks’s shooting spree. As Headline USA has reported on numerous occasions, it was a local cop, Sgt. Aaron Zaliponi, who stopped Crooks with his shot from the ground. The Secret Service counter-sniper, David King, shot Crooks 10 seconds after the would-be assassin stopped firing.
Fox Nation released an extraordinary documentary on the Trump shooting, featuring new radio recordings and interviews with the Butler ESU members—including the first ever interview with Aaron Zaliponi, who thinks he shot Crooks first.
Highly recommended! Raises more questions too pic.twitter.com/17F4vYiro2— Ken Silva (@JD_Cashless) November 5, 2024
Karl also reported that the Secret Service visited Butler Memorial Hospital in advance of the event, when in fact agents did not visit it at all—yet another security failure, this one revealed by Headline USA after this publication exclusively obtained the Butler EMS’s after-action report.
“With that, 4 (ish) years ago when there was a rally at the airport, the Secret Service did a site inspection here at BMH. That did not occur this time. Thankfully, I had the plan from that time and did meet with key staff members on my way to the event that day—apprising them of plan should anything occur,” an unnamed BMH official said in the after-action report, which can be found here.
Ken Silva is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/jd_cashless.
