President Donald Trump responded to the latest potential threat against his life with a notably upbeat reaction during his first public comments on the incident.
“Well the only thing I get a little solace from is they say only consequential presidents [are targeted for assassination] and I am definitely consequential,” Trump said when asked by Fox News’s Trace Gallagher about the ongoing concerns over assassination threats. The remarks were Trump’s first public comments on the incident and were notably briefer than his responses to previous threats.
The Secret Service is investigating whether the armed man arrested outside of Trump’s National Golf Club in Rancho Palos Verdes, California, on Sunday intended to harm the president.
Jeanine John Taele, 38, was arrested after FBI agents allegedly found him carrying a 16-round magazine in his pocket.
According to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, Taele was also seen taking photographs and videos near the property.
If investigators determine that Taele was targeting Trump, it would mark the third widely reported threat involving the president this year, following the Secret Service’s fatal shooting of an armed individual carrying a shotgun and gas canister near Mar-a-Lago and the arrest of a man who breached security at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
Before 2026, President Trump survived an assassination attempt at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July 2024, when a gunman grazed his ear with a bullet. Weeks later, another armed suspect was discovered hiding with a rifle near Trump International Golf Club in Florida before authorities said he could carry out an attack.
Trump said he considers himself “consequential” because of his handling of the economy and Iran.
Trump’s comments come after the Justice Department in 2024 charged Farhad Shakeri, whom prosecutors identified as an asset of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, in connection with an alleged murder-for-hire plot that included plans to assassinate President Trump.
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