A day after Donald Trump survived an assassination bid at his last campaign rally, the former US President Donald Trump praised the Secret Service officials for their heroic actions.

“They took him (shooter) out with one shot right between the eyes,” he told the New York Post in an interview. “They did a fantastic job,” he added.

“It’s surreal for all of us,” he said.

Donald Trump told the publication that he would have been dead had he not tilted his head slightly to the right to read a chart while addressing the rally.

“I’m not supposed to be here, I’m supposed to be dead,” Trump told the New York Post.

Donald Trump told the New York Post that as Secret Service agents led him off stage, he still wanted to continue speaking to supporters.

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

The 78-year-old had just started his speech during a Saturday campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania when the shots rang out and one of the bullets grazed his ear.

A moment of terrifying political violence at the rally instantly turned into a piece of Donald Trump iconography that’s likely to turbocharge his presidential bid.

Images of a defiant Trump – with his fist raised over his head and his bloody right ear, as Secret Service agents surround him and the American flag waving in the background – are blazing across social media and television.

He said that he was glad he didn’t have to die for an iconic picture. “A lot of people say it’s the most iconic photo they’ve ever seen. They’re right, and I didn’t die. Usually, you have to die to have an iconic picture,” Trump told the New York Post.