Helen Comperatore, whose husband was killed Saturday when a gunman tried to assassinate Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania, said she declined to speak to President Joe Biden when he called her family afterward.
“I didn’t want to talk to him,” she told the New York Post on Monday. “My husband was a devout Republican and he would not have wanted me to talk to him.”
She said her husband, Corey Comperatore, was a Trump supporter who was excited to be at the rally with her and their two daughters.
“I support Trump. That’s who I’m voting for, but I don’t have ill will towards Biden,” she said. “He didn’t do anything bad to my husband. A 20-year-old despicable kid did.”
NBC News reported Tuesday that Trump has reached out and spoken with a member of the Comperatore family.
Corey Comperatore, a former fire chief, was 50. Two other men, David Dutch, 57, and James Copenhaver, 74, were critically injured in the assassination attempt but are now in stable condition.
On Sunday, Trump wrote in part on Truth Social: “Our love goes out to the other victims and their families. We pray for the recovery of those who were wounded, and hold in our hearts the memory of the citizen who was so horribly killed.”
Helen Comperatore told the New York Post that her husband died while shielding his family and that his last words were “Get down!”
Corey Comperatore died “protecting his family from the bullets that were being fired,” Biden said at a White House news conference Sunday. “And he lost his life. God love him.”
On Tuesday, House lawmakers introduced a bipartisan resolution to honor Corey Comperatore and denounce political violence.
