Yesterday, while they were in Grand Rapids, Michigan for the former president’s first public rally since the assassination attempt on him seven days earlier, Donald Trump and J.D. Vance sat for an interview with FOX News prime time host Jesse Watters.

The full interview will be run on Watters World, Monday July 22 on the FOX News channel at 8:00 p.m. ET/10:00 p.m. PT.

Late Saturday, FOX News Media sent selected journalists, including me, two salient excerpts from the interview. They put both candidates on the record responding to Watters’ questions about the inadequacy of the Secret Service’s actions to protect the former president on that fateful day, July 13 in Butler, Pennsylvania, when he was literally millimeters away from a kill shot by a would-be assassin wielding a long gun.

As FOX News Media notes, President Trump’s sit down with Jesse Watters is “the first joint interview [with Trump and Vance].” In addition, “This is Trump’s first extensive television interview since both the attempted assassination and the RNC.”

The breaking news from the interview clips is that Vance said that “I don’t trust the [FBI] bureau leadership.”

From the transcript courtesy of FOX News Media, starting with whether former President Trump was told not to take the stage ahead of the attempted assassination at his rally:

JESSE WATTERS: Mistakes were made. They were monitoring this guy [the would-be assassin] for an hour beforehand. No one told you not to take the stage?

DONALD TRUMP: Nobody mentioned it, nobody said there was a problem. I would've waited for 15, they could've said let's wait for 15 minutes, 20 minutes, 5 minutes, something. Nobody said. I think that was a mistake. How did somebody get on that roof? And why wasn't he reported? Because people saw he was on the roof. You had Trumpers screaming, the woman in the red shirt, she was screaming "there's a man on the roof" and then other people said "there's a man on the roof who's got a gun" and that was quite a bit before I walked on the stage, so you would've thought someone would've done something about it.

President Trump, Sen. Vance and FOX News Host Jesse Watters, Grand Rapids, Michigan July 20, 2024

Screenshot by Peter Chowka of FOX News video used with the permission of FOX News

On whether there is trust in the FBI’s investigation of the attempted assassination:

JESSE WATTERS: The FBI is doing an investigation on the assassination attempt, do you trust the bureau? 

JD VANCE: I don’t trust the bureau leadership, but I certainly think there are a lot of good field agents, guys on the ground, but what the hell was going on? How was that guy ever allowed to be there in the first place? I think somebody, whether it’s someone higher up or somebody else involved really did screw up. 

DONALD TRUMP: There’s some things going on with our government that we have to really worry about. Did we have enough people? Why didn’t we have enough people? Somebody said that a lot of people were put on Biden’s detail, the problem is Biden doesn’t draw anybody, he draws flies.

The videos of the segment are online here and here.

President Trump during his interview July 20, 2024 in Grand Rapids, Michigan with Jesse Watters

Screenshot by Peter Chowka of FOX News video used with the permission fo FOX News

In the video, President Trump is sporting a smaller flesh-colored bandage on his ear compared with the larger white bandage that he wore covering his wound and most of his right ear during the four day Republican Convention that concluded on Thursday.

Peter Barry Chowka is a veteran journalist who has covered national politics and other topics for over five decades. His most recent interview on BBC Radio in the U.K. on July 20th  can be listened to here. His web page with links to his work and a bio is http://peter.media. Peter’s extensive American American Thinker archive: http://tinyurl.com/pcathinker. His X/Twitter account is @pchowka.