Scalise to focus on Trump's compassion in RNC speech, says assassination attempt brought back 2017 'emotions'

EXCLUSIVE: MILWAUKEE — House Majority Leader Steve Scalise plans to use his Republican National Convention speech Tuesday night to talk about the "warm and compassionate person Donald Trump is" while reflecting on his own near-death experience at the hands of a would-be assassin in 2017, Fox News Digital has learned.

The Louisiana Republican sat down for an interview with Fox News Digital on the sidelines of the Republican National Convention on Tuesday, just hours before he is set to address the convention.

Scalise recalled his immediate reaction to learning of the assassination attempt on former President Trump on Saturday night at his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

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"I didn’t know how badly President Trump was hit, you know, and you saw him go down, and even when he got up, you just don’t know," Scalise said. "I know what I went through, and when you’re hit, your body just kind of shuts down, so you don’t even know how bad you are, and your body kind of tricks you to hold you together, so you can be in a lot worse shape."

"I was really worried about him until I heard later that he actually went to the hospital and got checked out and was OK," Scalise said.

But the assassination attempt brought back a lot of "emotions" for Scalise, who was shot at a congressional baseball practice in 2017.

"You saw the raw video footage with the audio of the ‘pop, pop’ of the shots, and they sounded eerily similar to what I experienced, and the term ‘shooter down’ was the same thing they said on the ball field that day, so, you know, a lot of similarities," Scalise told Fox News Digital.

"But luckily for both of us, I think God was on the ball field –