President Donald Trump on Wednesday mixed humor with unusually somber remarks about Iranian assassination threats, joking at the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, that he would rather be No. 1 on TikTok than "No. 1 on the list for killing" before acknowledging that "maybe" his luck won't last long.

"They want to take out the U.S. leader, me," Trump said while appearing with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte. "I'm on every list. I saw things this morning. I'm on every single one of their lists. And so far, I guess I've been a little bit lucky, but that maybe doesn't last very long because that's the way it goes.

"We have great people, but these are evil, sick people, and we have to rid their cancer, and you know what you do? You've got to cut out cancer early."

Prominent figures attending the funeral of former Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who was killed in the initial airstrikes by U.S. and Israeli forces on Feb. 28, vowed revenge against Trump, including calls for his assassination.

"Now that Donald Trump is within our reach and has come to Turkey for the NATO summit, let's officially and without any pretense target his location in [Turkey] with missiles," Hamid Rasaei, a hard-line member of Iran's Parliament, wrote on the Iranian social media site Virasty, according to The Jerusalem Post.

A majority of members of Iran's Assembly of Experts last week signed a statement declaring that killing Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was a religious duty.

The 88-member Assembly of Experts issued a 10-point statement in which it said killing "the wicked prime minister of the Zionist regime" and "the criminal American president" was a religious duty that must be carried out "under any circumstances."

At a news conference later Wednesday, Trump was asked about his previous comments regarding possible Iranian assassination attempts and his assertion that he is "No. 1 on the kill list for Iran." His comments aired live on Newsmax and the free Newsmax2 streaming platform.

"Well, I speak about it a lot because, you know, the life of a president is very dangerous," he said before citing what he said was a 5.2% mortality rate associated with the presidency. "It's 5.2%. You know what a race-car driver is? One-tenth of 1%. A bull rider, that looks pretty dangerous to me. It's one-tenth of 1%. No, it's 5.2% ... is you don't make it.

"You should have told me. You're an excellent reporter. You should have told me that years ago. Maybe I wouldn't have run. It's a very dangerous profession.

"No, I'm number one on the kill list for Iran. They're lovely people. I'm No. 1 ... but I don't really care because I'm doing my job and I'm doing it, I hope, better than anybody's ever done it because we have a country that's hot and really, really successful.

"But I mention it only because it's on the list. I mean, there was another list [that] came out yesterday and I'm No. 1 on. I like being No. 1 on TikTok better, but I'm No. 1 on the list for killing."

Trump's comments came amid speculation he was not traveling home on the new Air Force One jet given to the U.S. by Qatar because of security concerns regarding Iran.

Trump used the old Air Force One jet that had carried presidents for nearly four decades. He said the new jet was going to "a couple of bases" in Europe "so the soldiers can see it because it's truly magnificent."