Donald Trump supporters gathered Saturday for a major rally at the same site where he narrowly avoided an assassin’s bullet in July — a profoundly shocking moment in a White House race still clouded by the threat of political violence.
Trump’s defiant and much-hyped return to Butler, Pennsylvania, comes exactly one month before the November 5 presidential election, and a day after President Joe Biden voiced concerns about whether the outcome would be peaceful.
The assassination attempt three months ago that left Trump bloodied and the entire country stunned was seen — at the time — as a pivotal moment that could tip the race in the former president’s favor.
He was riding a clear poll lead after crushing Biden in a TV debate and entered the Republican convention in Milwaukee as a political martyr — backed by the image of himself with a blood-streaked face and pumped fist, shouting “fight, fight, fight” as he was bundled off the stage by Secret Service agents.
Saturday’s rally is clearly aimed at recovering some of that momentum as a bitter and bruising campaign enters its final stretch.
And much has changed since his last visit.
– A whole new race –
Barely a week after the failed assassination bid, the presidential race was turned on its head by another stunning development when Biden dropped out and was replaced as the Democratic nominee by Vice President Kamala Harris.
The Harris campaign has clawed back the poll deficit — or in some states even reversed it — and the extraordinary events in Butler have largely dropped from the political discourse.
The Trump campaign has sought to bring them back by heavily promoting Saturday’s event as a triumphant return to the site where their candidate “took a bullet for democracy.”
Vice President Harris, meanwhile, travelled to North Carolina on Saturday to meet with emergency responders and residents impacted by Hurricane Helene that cut a swathe of destruction through half a dozen US states and left more than 200 people dead.
The storm has become something of a political issue, with Trump criticizing the federal response and alleging — without any evidence — that relief funds had been misappropriated by the Harris-Biden administration, and redirected towards migrants.
– Election violence –
In his convention speech in Milwaukee in July, Trump had vowed never to talk about the assassination attempt again — but he has often returned to the subject in detail and now talks about Butler as a sacred “monument” for his supporters.
Trump will speak behind protective glass on Saturday — a stark reminder of the security concerns around the 2024 campaign that were underscored by another incident with a gunman last month, when Trump was playing golf.
It will be a stressful day for the Secret Service, whose agents were subjected to scathing criticism for failing to secure the building — just a few hundred feet away — from where the Butler shooter managed to fire eight shots at Trump before being shot dead himself.
Along with Trump, two supporters were wounded and one — firefighter Corey Comperatore — was killed.
Ten days later the director of the Secret Service, Kimberly Cheatle, resigned and the agency remains under heavy pressure to prevent any further incidents.
Trump and his campaign have tried to argue that dire Democrat warnings about the former president representing an existential threat to US democracy amounted to incitement to violence.
In the immediate aftermath of the Butler shooting, all sides urged a lowering of the political temperature, but the respite was short-lived and Trump in particular was quick to revert to the highly inflammatory rhetoric and personal attacks that have always marked his campaign style.
The former president still rejects his defeat to Biden in 2020 and has so far refused to commit to accepting the eventual result in November.
This despite being indicted over what prosecutors allege was a “private criminal effort” to subvert the 2020 election that culminated in his supporters storming the Capitol.
Asked on Friday about the possibility of further election-related violence, Biden made his doubts clear.
“I’m confident it will be free and fair. I don’t know whether it will be peaceful,” he told reporters.
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