‘Scared’ and ‘pissed’: Pennsylvania delegate recalls standing just 20 feet away from Trump during shooting

Pennsylvania GOP Delegate Mike McMullen was only about 20 feet behind former President Donald Trump on Saturday when he heard loud pops that he described thinking were fireworks or bang snaps being set off as "a joke."

Then the reality of what he was hearing, as McMullen noted such noisemakers wouldn’t have made it through security, ignited frenzy among the crowd at the Butler Farms Show Grounds as confusion spread.

Immediately, attendees began to “hit the ground,” McMullen said, as they began to consider it an active shooting situation.

“We don't know if there's one shooter, multiple shooters. We don't know where the shots are coming from,” McMullen told the Washington Examiner during an interview. “So we hit the deck, on the ground, you know, and some people are still standing up like, ‘What's going on?’”

Trump had just taken the stage at his campaign rally shortly after 6 p.m. The former president made his typical show, greeting supporters as the crowd cheered him on from the stands, but just minutes into his speech, as Trump began talking through statistics on immigration, a bullet whizzed by and grazed him on the ear.

Trump, while speaking with the Washington Examiner’s Salena Zito, said the reality of the shooting was "just setting in."

“I rarely look away from the crowd," Trump said. "Had I not done that in that moment, well, we would not be talking today, would we?”

Trump was pierced in the upper-right part of his ear, which was photographed as the former president had blood smeared across his face.

“We saw him swat it. We thought at first … like he had blood on his ear, ‘OK, so when he went down,’ we thought this, ‘Did he hit the podium? Did he hit the microphone? Was there blood that way?’” McMullen said. “No, but that's where he was shot.”

McMullen, who is also a political consultant, recalled the swarm of Secret Service agents who pounced on Trump after the shooter was neutralized, describing the moments before the former president’s now-iconic photo pumping his fist in the air.

“He just got shot at in an intense assassination [attempt] of the president. He gets up, and he’s like waving and pumping his fist and all that, and he gives a thumbs up,” McMullen said. “It's insane. I can't believe it. Somebody just attempted your life, you get up and you’re doing a fist bump. You're giving a thumbs up.”

McCullen described being left in a state of adrenaline long after the threat was cleared, saying that while "everybody dealt with it differently," he was in "shock and awe," as well as scared and "pissed."

"Somebody just shot at the [former] president,” McMullen said. “We were scared to death.”

The shooting occurred just days before the Republican National Convention began in Milwaukee, where several delegates told the Washington Examiner the incident would only serve to energize the base. Trump will address the party later this week in a speech he said is being rewritten to reflect his new effort at national unity.

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McMullen said that sentiment was shared among delegates in his party, noting the assassination attempt has “woken up a sleeping giant” among the GOP base.

“I'm still wired. I'm pissed. I'm mad. I'm sad for our country,” McMullen said. “This is just pure evil. What happened … was pure evil, and it's wrong.”