Republican Pennsylvania Senate candidate Dave McCormick stated “an inch difference” prevented former President Donald Trump from dying at this rally in Butler, Pennsylvania on Saturday.

McCormick, who was in the front row at the time shots rang out, said Trump went down with the Secret Service immediately, adding that the former president showed “leadership” by assuring the public he was OK when he raised his fist. He also said that an attendee at the rally behind him had been hit by one of the bullets, and was “bleeding very badly.”

“And so there were sort of two things going on at the same time, one to my left and one to my right,” McCormick said on ABC News’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos. “And the president was taken off the stage, and there was a real confusion of what was going on, whether there were multiple shooters, whether the shooting was done.”

“(It’s a) really a sad day,” he said. “You know, an inch difference and the president would have been dead. It was a very scary moment.”

The candidate also condemned “extreme rhetoric” across the board, referencing the shooting on Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana in 2017 and the attack on Paul Pelosi, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, in 2022.

He encouraged others to come together to push back on political violence, arguing that U.S. residents need to recognize they have a “conflict of ideas” but that this should not justify “attacking people.”

McCormick is one of several people who have contributed to a fundraiser from the Trump campaign aimed at supporting the victims of the shooting. One attendee was killed and two others were injured. As of noon on Sunday, the fundraiser has raised over $1 million.

Other contributions included $50,000 from musician Kid Rock, $30,000 from former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, and $10,000 from billionaire Bill Ackman, who gave his endorsement to Trump after the shooting.