Why did Donald Trump want his shoes after the assassination attempt?

Imagine you’re one of the two main candidates in a presidential race in the United States. Someone tries to assassinate you and hits your ear, the Secret Service agents swarm and create a human shield, yet you… scream to get your shoes back?

Sounds impossible? You bet. But that’s exactly what happened on July 13 at Pennsylvania’s Donald Trump rally, where an assassination attempt on the former president’s life took place. After a shot grazed his right ear, Trump was surrounded and pinned to the ground by the Secret Service agents, who tried their best to protect him.

As you probably already know, after firing eight to 10 shots, Thomas Matthew Crooks was killed by the Secret Service snipers. Afterward, the area was proclaimed to be clear, and the team was commanded to take Trump off the stage and lead him to safety. When they tried to do that, though, the Republican nominee in the 2024 election reportedly shouted to get his shoes back.

Why did Donald Trump want to get his shoes back after an assassination attempt on his life?

While there are many theories and rumors about what exactly happened that day, the biggest of them all might be why Donald Trump so desperately wanted to get his footwear back. “Let me get my shoes,” Trump told the Secret Service seconds after gunshots were fired, according to many reports. Were they an exclusive brand or a gift from someone close to him, or maybe he just couldn’t walk barefoot back to safety?

The truth is no one knows exactly, but as we said, there is a theory that sounds…somewhat reasonable.

After the rally, The Sun U.S. interviewed Andrew Giuliani, son of the former New York mayor, Rudy Giuliani. In his eyes, Trump’s desire to get his shoes back on, which were knocked off when the Secret Service agents swarmed him, was an effort to show his supporters he was willing to fight.

“For him to ask Secret Service to wait to get his shoes, I know he was thinking, ‘I want to show American people I can walk it off,'” Giuliani told The Sun.

One of the main theories running rampant around social media after July 13’s rally is that this assassination attempt was staged. Believers of that theory point out how Trump held his fist high after getting up and earned free PR points for doing so. If that were the case, his desire to get his shoes back on would supplement it. However, there is no hard evidence whatsoever that makes that theory anywhere close to the truth.

At the same time, after the assassination attempt, Trump said he wanted to continue speaking but was told it wasn’t safe, and he needed to head to the hospital. And I guess talking to your voters after your life had just been threatened without your shoes on is uncomfortable, to say the least.

So the truth is, we never know until Trump addresses it himself in a possible future interview. And with the election picking up steam, he will have plenty of occasions to share his thoughts, for better or worse.