Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller was just yards away from Donald Trump when the former president was shot during a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday.
Miller is a longtime ally of Trump’s. In a conversation with the Texas Standard on Monday, he was critical of how the Secret Service responded to the shooting, which left one person dead and two others critically injured.
“Once they knew there was a shooter on the roof, they should have got Trump off the stage at that point. That didn’t happen,” Miller said. “And they let that guy fire off seven, eight rounds before they took him out. So that is very disappointing to me.”
Miller didn’t get a chance to listen to President Joe Biden’s speech to the nation on Sunday evening. But he agreed with the president’s message in hoping that the assassination attempt will reduce the level of hostility in American politics.
“Hopefully, if some good comes out of this, hopefully the vitriol will be turned down,” Miller said. “Hopefully people will be less focused on personal attacks and more focused on the issues.”
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On Saturday, Sid Miller told The Texas Newsroom he heard six to eight shots and saw a rally attendee just behind him who appeared to be very hurt.
“I was on the front row standing up about 30 feet from President Trump when the shooting started,” he said. “There was a lady behind me who caught a stray bullet. She seemed to be in pretty serious condition.”
Miller, a potential future cabinet pick if Trump is elected again, said he suspected a small caliber weapon was used because of the sounds the shots gave off. The FBI later identified the weapon as an AR-style rifle. The Secret Service is investigating how the gunman was able to get so close to the rally.
“At first when it went off, I thought it was a balloon. Second one went off, I thought, well, maybe that’s firecrackers. And by the third one, I realized that it was a gunshot,” he said.
Miller said he saw the president hit. While most people took cover, he gazed around for the shooter but could not identify one in the chaos. Miller, a rancher, said he’d never before had an experience like this.