Former President Donald Trump acknowledged the miraculous nature of his brush with death on Saturday when a would-be assassin shot him in his right ear, narrowly missing his head, at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Trump noted that only the fact that he had turned his head slightly at the moment the shots were fired saved him from certain death.

“I’m not supposed to be here, I’m supposed to be dead,” Trump told The New York Post aboard his private plane on Sunday on his way to the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Calling the attempted assassination a “very surreal experience,” Trump said, “The doctor at the hospital said he never saw anything like this. He called it a miracle.”

Trump said he wanted to continue speaking after he was shot, but Secret Service agents hustled him off the stage, reminding him his safety was at stake and that he needed to go to a hospital.

Praising the Secret Service agents who tackled him as “linebackers,” he explained why, after they got him to his feet, he had insisted, “Wait, I want to get my shoes.”

“The agents hit me so hard that my shoes fell off, and my shoes are tight,” he said, smiling.

He continued by praising the counter-sniper who killed the would-be assassin: “They took him out with one shot right between the eyes. They did a fantastic job. … It’s surreal for all of us.”

“I just wanted to keep speaking, but I just got shot,” he asserted.

Pennsylvania GOP senatorial candidate David McCormick, who was seated in the front row behind Trump when the attack occurred, acknowledged, “It was pretty clear quickly that this was a series of shots. And the president went down immediately and the Secret Service jumped on top of him. And then he got up and you saw the pictures you’re now seeing on TV where his fist came out in sort of a measure of, I think, defiance and reassurance, leadership. He really reassured people that he was okay. …  An inch difference and the president would have been dead. It was a very scary moment.”

A spokesman for the Secret Service stated that local police were responsible for securing the rooftop from which the gunman attempting to assassinate former President Donald Trump rested, rather than the Secret Service.

The gunman climbed onto the roof on the grounds of AGR International Inc., roughly  130 yards from where Trump spoke at a campaign rally on Saturday, before he started shooting, barely missing killing the former president, who was shot in the ear while killing rally attendee Corey Comperatore and wounding two others.

According to Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi, the agency is responsible for security within a designated perimeter around the event it is supposed to protect, The New York Times reported.  He said the perimeter for Saturday’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, included the venue, the audience, and the protectee, and thus, the building from which the gunman launched his attack was the responsibility of local police.

Guglielmi noted that four counter-sniper teams, two from local law enforcement and two from his agency, had been deployed at the event. He stated that the gunman had not been “camped out” on the roof and that there wasn’t much time between civilians seeing the gunman and the time he started shooting.

Guglielmi’s perspective was countered by some former law enforcement officials, including those with ties to the Secret Service, who questioned why the building from which the gunman launched his attack was not considered within the perimeter for which the Secret Service was responsible.

“Did we miss something? And if we did miss something, we need to stand up and take ownership of it,” Robert E. McDonald, who served in the Secret Service for 20 years, asked. “We’re not looking at any skyscrapers here. They should be able to see that. And if somebody is up there, they should be able to send law enforcement personnel up there to check that out.”

A resident whose home lies near the building from where the attack was launched told The New York Post that no one from law enforcement contacted her before the event about security, saying, “Nobody. Nobody called me, nobody stopped here. I kinda was thinking that as close as my house is, that I honestly thought this might be part of a command station at some point.”

“I was talking to my neighbors yesterday, and none of them had gotten a call. Or anything,” she added.

“I guess it’s kind of the same question that everybody has. I guess, as far as like, why that area wasn’t secure.”

A senior law enforcement official revealed that local law enforcement saw the gunman near the event magnetometers on Saturday and acting in a suspicious manner, CNN reported, adding, “They put it out over their radio to keep an eye on him – and that information was passed to Secret Service as well, according to the source.” CNN also stated that the gunman was seen jumping “roof to roof” before he stooped on the roof from which he launched the attack. A local police officer reportedly climbed a ladder onto the roof but backed down when the gunman pointed his rifle at him.

RELATED: AP Reports That Local Police Officer Retreated After Would-Be Trump Assassin Pointed Gun At Him