After the horrific assassination attempt Saturday evening, former President Donald Trump credited an immigration chart with saving his life, Federation for American Migration Reform claims.
The former president was a few minutes into his remarks at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, when he suddenly turned his head to the right to view the chart that was displayed on a screen next to the stage. It was at that moment that the would-be assassin, identified by the FBI as Thomas Crooks, shot towards the former president and into the crowd, clipping Mr. Trump’s right ear.
Congressman Ronny Jackson (R-Tex.), who was Trump’s White House physician, spoke to the former President just hours after the horrific event. And in an interview with the New York Times, he described speaking to Trump about the life-saving chart. As Jackson told the Times, Trump said, “ ‘The border patrol saved my life….I was going over that border patrol chart.’” Trump added, “ ‘If I hadn’t pointed at that chart and turned my head to look at it, that bullet would have hit me right in the head.’”
Southwest border encounters chart from Senator Ron Johnson’s office
Medical experts interviewed since the assassination attempt agree that if Mr. Trump had been facing the audience instead of looking at the chart, the bullet that hit his ear would have entered his skull instead and almost certainly killed him.
The chart was created by Senator Ron Johnson, Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee and his staff. It illustrates the change in encounters along the southern border relative to various policy decisions spanning 12 years. In particular, it shows the exponential rise in illegal border crossings the moment President Biden begins implementing open-borders policies. For example, the month after President Biden announced a pause in deportations, southwest border encounters nearly doubled.
Senator Johnson, who has consistently supported strong immigration enforcement, has posted a long list of efforts he has undertaken to rein in President Biden’s open-borders policies. While his efforts to secure our border and end the abuse of our immigration policies have garnered wide media attention, it is unlikely that the Senator, or his staff, ever realized that the chart they created would change the course of history.
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