BUTLER, Pennsylvania — Bulletproof glass is now standard, and while Donald Trump relived the moment that almost made him a martyr, the threat of political violence increasingly seems mundane.
The attempt on his life would have gone unmentioned while on stage with Vice President Kamala Harris last month had he not brought it up himself. And later, when Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz clashed over policy during the undercard debate, it disappeared entirely. Just 30 days from the election, the first – and then the second – assassination attempts have largely receded from focus.
“For 15 seconds, time stood still,” Trump said Saturday recounting the near-death experience on the same spot where a bullet came inches from his head. Then time returned to schedule, and the world largely moved on. This was due, in part, to designed bravado, which the Trump campaign underscored by returning to the scene of the crime. The former president brought a live, and lively, prop with him this time in the person of Elon Musk. The billionaire entrepreneur who heads Tesla, Space X, and the social media giant formerly known as Twitter, endorsed Trump immediately after the July 13 assassination attempt here. On Saturday he did Trump one better: Sporting an “Occupy Mars” shirt under his sport coat and a black Make America Great Again hat, Musk gave Trump a spirited shout-out while leaping in the air twice with his arms held high, further energizing an already amped-up audience.
Trump himself began in Butler with a theatrical understatement, declaring after he stepped on stage, “As I was saying …” What followed was as a much a celebration of defiance in the face of danger as it was a commemoration of the life of firefighter Corey Comperatore who lost his life here. Ahead of the much-anticipated rally, the word campaign officials used most often was “bittersweet.” Roughly 20 minutes into a nearly two-hour long address, though, after taking care to praise how Comperatore had shielded his wife and children from a hail of bullets with his own body, regular order resumed.
“We’re here for a reason, and that’s to win,” the candidate said. Motioning to the firefighter’s uniform lovingly placed in the grandstands, Trump added, “Corey wants us to win too.” A stump speech followed, punctuated by a few new riffs, including one about how Harris could not properly work a teleprompter.
But it would be a mistake to conclude that Trump has turned the page. His campaign has been briefed on the ongoing efforts by Iran to kill him. Security has been visibly increased, and aides have expressed their own private fears about the new occupational hazards that suddenly come with a job in politics. Even the former president has been a bit jumpy. Spooked last month by a commotion in the crowd at a Long Island rally, Trump quickly regained composure by joking that he had “a yips problem.”
The failed assassinations have started to fade in prominence, in part because the rhetoric about Trump has undeniably cooled. Calling him an existential threat is no longer exactly fashionable.
While the bandage was still fresh on the former president’s ear, Vance laid the blame at the feet of Democrats. He condemned Biden in July for making the “central premise” of his campaign the idea that Trump was “an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs.” He joined the GOP ticket two weeks later. Then, three days after the Republican nominating convention, Biden withdrew from the race, taking his arguments about democracy with him.
Harris was quick to condemn both assassination attempts specifically and political violence generally this summer. She also has changed her language. While allies like former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton still describe the election as a referendum on “democracy vs. autocracy,” the vice president prefers to speak in broader terms about preserving “freedom.”
But this is too little too late for Vance. He reminded the crowd how another thwarted assassin had waited outside Trump’s golf course just three weeks ago with a rifle, intent on “finishing the job.” Said the vice-presidential nominee, “He wrote, ‘democracy is on the ballot,’ the exact same words that Kamala Harris wrote after accusing Trump of being a dictator only days before the first attempt on his life.”
Republicans blame the media and the Democrats, often in the same breath, for moving on from history.
“It made him sympathetic,” Dave McCormick said of Trump in the aftermath of the first assassination attempt. The Pennsylvania Senate candidate was again in Butler for the second rally and told RCP that the former president “really did show something that you can’t plan for – courage under fire.”
The enduring image of that day is iconic: Trump’s face covered in blood, surrounded by Secret Service, raising a fist toward the sky in defiance. Indelible in the minds of supporters, it was everywhere Saturday and featured most prominently in the stalls of vendors who had emblazoned the unlicensed portrait on everything from flags to coffee mugs to T-shirts.
The moment and the inspired emotions, said McCormick, are “probably not something they want to spend a lot of time on. They want to move past it.”
Vance told RealClearPolitics after the rally that there had been “an effort to memory-hole” the attacks on Trump, calling what he considers insufficient coverage on the history-making moments “a disgrace.” Standing in front of the cameras and a semi-circle of reporters backstage, Vance challenged the gaggle: “The press should ask themselves, if a similar thing had happened, God forbid, to Kamala Harris, would they be covering it in the same way?”
A change in personalities, and rhetoric, has meanwhile transformed the race. With Biden on his way out the door, Democrats have regained the lead both nationally and in several of the swing states. Trump now trails Harris by 2 points in the RealClearPolitics Average, and while he once enjoyed a healthy 5-point lead in Pennsylvania, she has tied the race here.
By returning to Butler, Trump seemed intent on recapturing the momentum that defined the summer before Biden dropped out and back when Republicans still felt they could not lose. The crowd here certainly delivered the numbers. Voters from around the country flocked to Pennsylvania and happily waited for hours in line to make it through security. “He took a bullet for me,” said Claudia Leschina, a small business owner who flew from Chicago to Cleveland before driving to Pittsburgh the night before. “Why wouldn’t I come again to see him, even though I’m not from here?”
Trump had vowed almost immediately to return to Butler, a trip complicated by the myriad challenges of holding a rally outdoors. Secret Service and police rolled heavy three months later, manning a perimeter built from shipping containers to obstruct outside views of the stage, flying drones overhead, and standing guard on nearby rooftops. The sun was beginning to set by the time the candidate made it on stage. He led a moment of silence at 6:11p.m. to commemorate the exact moment three months earlier when shots rang out. A bell rang. Afterward a tenor sang “Ave Maria.”
While the evening was part memorial and part political rally, senior Trump advisor Chris LaCivita rejected the idea that the event was meant to recapture a past moment. “I don’t think that we need to remind voters at all that he got shot,” he said, “and that someone tried to kill him a second time.” If anything, LaCivita added, the campaign ought to remind voters of the ongoing Iranian plot to kill the former president, something he believes the Biden administration has downplayed.
Martha Ortega said a reminder isn’t necessary anyway. The retired airline worker, who immigrated from Columbia in the 1960s and who made the trip to Butler from Illinois, insisted that even if the assassination attempts no longer make the nightly news, “the people have not forgotten.”
Donald Surena, a Pennsylvania native who lives in Virginia, said the country had been shocked into reality last July, forced to acknowledge that progress is not guaranteed. “In real life,” the retiree said, “things can get worse. That is exactly why I am here.” For Butler, where he grew up, and for the country, he said, “what’s most important is the survival of our nation, not the circumstances of one day.”
According to Elon Musk, the prescription leaving Butler was twofold, then. Quoting Trump after the first assassination attempt, the billionaire led the crowd in a chant of “Fight! Fight! Fight!” before quickly adding, “Vote! Vote! Vote!”
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