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06-10-2024
BUTLER. PENNSYLVANIA: Donald Trump appeared to be well on his way to the White House after he was shot nearly three months ago. He was coming off a dominating debate performance against Joe Biden, was leading in national polls and arrived at his nominating convention in Milwaukee a near-martyr.
Trump is returning to Butler, Pennsylvania, Saturday under markedly different political circumstances.
Vice President Kamala Harris’ candidacy upended not just Trump’s campaign, but Republicans’ belief that he could ride the support and goodwill he engendered following the attempt on his life straight back into the Oval Office. After struggling through the summer to recalibrate against his new opponent, Trump is now in a tight race against Harris. The two are effectively tied in Pennsylvania, per polling averages, and in other battleground states, while Harris holds a slight edge in national surveys.
Trump’s supporters view his return to this deep-red slice of purple Pennsylvania as an opportunity for the former president to energize his base in this key state at a critical juncture, with Election Day just one month away.
For some Trump allies, the rally is also a reminder of their own uneasy feelings about the July attack, which left the former president and his supporters alike deeply rattled.
“There’s a message here, right? To come back to the scene: How many folks would do that? How many folks would be afraid just from a psychological perspective, being intimidated to come back to the place where you almost lost your life,” said Sam DeMarco, the chair of the neighboring Allegheny County GOP and “it’s something that will put the wind in the sails of his supporters and many of the folks who are working on the campaign as they enter the last couple of weeks of this election and get them to go out and make additional voter contacts,” DeMarco said but Saturday’s rally is also a deeply personal moment for Trump and his supporters, who recalled in interviews this week the trauma the shooting inflicted on them, their families and the broader Butler community that has now been irreversibly thrust into the international spotlight.
One man, Corey Comperatore, a volunteer firefighter and father, was killed as he shielded his family from the bullets, and two other men were hospitalized with injuries from the shooting.
The assassination attempt stunned residents in the western Pennsylvania steel town of roughly 13,000 that has now been marked as a crime scene and transformed into something of a tourist attraction. A local artist created a 4,000-nail sculpture of Trump raising his fist in the air that now sits on the farm grounds where it happened.
“The idea that something like this would happen to the president in our home is difficult to grasp. … It definitely affected everyone in a negative way, and it didn’t put a great lens on Butler County,” said Jondavid Longo, the mayor of Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania, a borough in Butler County. Longo was in the front row of the rally when Trump was shot and will be part of the speaking program at Saturday’s event.
“This is what I can only describe as a triumphant return for (Trump),” Longo said.
The former president Saturday is expected to honor the life of Comperatore and pay tribute to the two men who were injured in the attack as well as first responders. According to his campaign, Trump is also planning to revisit themes of unity that he cast aside just days after the shooting. The assassination attempt in Butler, the first time a president or candidate was harmed since Ronald Reagan survived an assassination attempt in 1981 led to intense scrutiny over the safety and security of Trump and the effectiveness of Secret Service protection. (Int’l News Desk)
