CBS News correspondent Scott MacFarlane revealed Wednesday that he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) less than two days after the July 13 assassination attempt on President Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Speaking on The Chuck ToddCast, MacFarlane described the event not only as a violent attack but as a flashpoint that triggered what he called a “horror” from the reaction of the crowd.
Trump was shot in the right ear during a campaign rally by 20-year-old gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks, who fired from a rooftop approximately 400 feet from the stage. One attendee, Corey Comperatore, a former volunteer fire chief, was killed shielding his family. Several others were injured.
MacFarlane, who was reporting from the rally, claimed that members of the press faced imminent physical danger from attendees in the minutes following the shooting. “I got diagnosed with PTSD within 48 hours,” he told Todd. “Not because, I think, of the shooting, but because... they were coming for us. If [Trump] didn’t jump up with his fist, they were going to come kill us.”
He described the moment Trump stood up after being wounded as pivotal. According to MacFarlane, it defused what he and other journalists believed was an escalating threat against the media.
“Many of us on press row... were quite confident we’d be dead if he didn’t get back up,” he said, referring to text conversations shared among reporters after the event.
MacFarlane alleged that several people in the crowd turned on journalists, accusing them of responsibility for the attempt on Trump’s life. “They’re going to beat us with their hands,” he said. “The Secret Service had bigger issues than protecting us... When [Trump] jumped up triumphantly, it saved us.”
He added that the experience left him haunted by what he called the “look in their faces,” citing it as emblematic of what he sees as a dangerous, irrational anger within parts of the American public.
The Secret Service and federal investigators have not reported any coordinated threats against journalists during the incident. Authorities have confirmed that the shooter acted alone and had no known affiliations with political groups. MacFarlane’s claims have not been independently corroborated.