Former President Donald Trump joked Wednesday that “golf is a very dangerous game” in a rare late-night talk show appearance just days after the Secret Service foiled a second assassination attempt against the 2024 Republican nominee.
Trump, 78, yukked it up with the co-hosts of Fox News’ “Gutfeld!” in an appearance taped hours before his raucous campaign rally on Long Island.
“Well Mr. P, how’s your golf game?” comedian Greg Gutfeld asked the former president.
“Well, I haven’t been thinking about it too much lately,” Trump responded. “I always said golf is a very dangerous game.”
“Especially if they’re playing with you,” Gutfeld quipped.
“Yeah, it’s true,” Trump said. “It’s pretty sad.”
The 45th president dodged a second attempt on his life Sunday after Secret Service agents spotted a rifle barrel poking out of some bushes along one of the holes of his Palm Beach, Fla., golf course, as Trump was on a green a few hundred yards away from the sniper.
“If they had told you that the shooter was there would you have tried to take him out with your 3 wood?” Gutfeld later asked Trump.
“I think so,” Trump responded. “If I knew.”
“Actually, the Secret Service did a great job,” he added. “They saw the barrel of a gun – big gun – and it came out through bushes. And how many people would see that?”
“He really was exceptional to have done it,” Trump said of the eagle-eyed agent.
“We’ve been going through a lot of it,” he said of being the target of would-be assassins in Butler, Pa., and Palm Beach. “We’re getting very good at it. But I don’t want to say that too loudly.”
When asked how he processes the scary incidents, Trump indicated that he’s reconciled that “being president is a very dangerous job.”
“With a president, 6% or 7% [get assassinated],” he noted.
The former president revealed that he doesn’t think “about mortality” but has thought “more about God” since the Butler shooting.
Trump also revealed his one regret about his debate earlier this month against Vice President Kamala Harris.
“I think my only regret is that I wanted to be elegant, and I didn’t want to go after the anchors. I wish I did, in a way,” he said, referring to ABC News anchors David Muir and Linsey Davis, who fact-checked the former president multiple times during the showdown while never correcting Harris.
In one anecdote, Trump recalled the time he received a panicked phone call from Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz after the then-president’s supporters “surrounded” his house.
“He called up years ago. I was in the White House and he said, ‘My house is being surrounded by people with American flags,” Trump claimed. “I said, ‘Is that a good thing or a bad thing? He said, ‘I think they’re going to attack me.’”
“They were MAGA people,” Trump said of the group harassing Harris’ running mate.
“[Walz] said, ‘Could you put out a word, like, that I’m your friend?’ I don’t even know him,” the former president continued. “And if you look back long ago … I put out a statement. ‘He’s a good man. The governor is on our side.’ I don’t – I didn’t know him, but I didn’t want him to get hurt. And everybody put down their flags and they left. “
“He said it was a miracle … I didn’t want him to get hurt.”
Walz told Politico in 2021 that Trump “brought armed people to my house,” blaming the incident on an April 17, 2020, tweet from the 45th president – at the height of pandemic lockdowns – that read, “Liberate Minnesota.”
The governor acknowledged placing a call to Trump and asking him to “clarify” the tweet.
On April 20, 2020, Trump tweeted, “Received a very nice call from [Walz] of Minnesota. We are working closely on getting him all he needs, and fast. Good things happening!”
Trump’s appearance on the comedy show was taped in front of a live studio audience, according to Fox News.
The interview marked Trump’s first on a broadcast or cable late-night show during an election cycle since his 2016 appearance on NBC’s “The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon,” the outlet said.
“Gutfeld!” attracts more Independents and Democrats than all broadcast late-night programs, according to data recently released by Nielsen MRI Fusion.