Trump’s return to Butler marks a dramatically changed US race

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. But it’s also “part of our healing process.”

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.

Those concerns only intensified after a gunman armed with an AK-47 style rifle, two gear bags and other equipment was arrested after authorities allegedly saw him pointing the gun through a fence at Trump at his golf course in West Palm Beach less than a month ago. The suspect was later charged with attempting to assassinate Trump. The former president and his campaign were also briefed by federal law enforcement on “real and specific threats from Iran to assassinate him.”

Security at Saturday’s rally will be tight with new protocols in place for the thousands of supporters expected to attend. There will be a beefed up Secret Service presence, a command center with local and federal law enforcement, as well as more snipers and sharpshooters in the area. The building that Trump’s would-be assassin, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, was able to clamber atop of “will be secured,” said Rep. Dan Meuser (R-Pa.), who attended the July 13 rally in Butler and will be there on Saturday.

Meuser added that resources to protect Trump “continue to be an issue, but Secret Service is being improved, and two weeks ago we passed a bill unanimously to fund a large increase for the Secret Service.”

In addition to an investigation by the FBI, a bipartisan House task force was formed to probe the near assassination of Trump and security failings in Pennsylvania and the second apparent assassination attempt in Florida.

Rep. Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania, the Republican task force co-chair, said during a recent hearing “There were security failures on multiple fronts” ahead of the Butler rally. Lawmakers have raised questions about why the Secret Service did not do a better job communicating with local law enforcement. An internal Secret Service probe blamed communication breakdowns among law enforcement agencies, issues with drone technology and “complacency” among members of the Secret Service advance staff for creating the conditions that allowed Crooks to open fire on the former president.

Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), is expected to appear with Trump. Elon Musk, who endorsed Trump shortly after the first assassination attempt, said he planned to attend the Butler rally.

According to a list of guests sent out by the campaign, Senate candidate Dave McCormick; Pennsylvania lawmakers; first responders who attended to the victims; and local officials who sat near Trump as shots rang out, like Longo, Butler County Commissioners Leslie Osche and Kimberly Geyer, will be returning to the site and speaking in the pre-program.

“The trauma of that day is something you can never walk away from — it’s not something we experience, especially not in my backyard,” said Osche. “But that said, we cannot be torn apart or frightened by those who would attempt to do so … resilience will be a focus.”

Zach Scherer, a Trump supporter from Chicora, a borough in Butler County, recalled the moment the gunshots rang out as he sat with his father just a few rows away from the stage where the former president was speaking.

“I grabbed my dad and just got under my chair and started praying that we weren’t going to get shot,” Scherer said in an interview this week. “It was absurd.”

Scherer’s family didn’t want him to keep going to Trump rallies after that. But he traveled to Trump’s campaign event in Indiana, Pennsylvania, late last month and plans to return to the farm show grounds Saturday.

“You can’t live in fear every day because shootings happen everywhere,” Scherer said.

And of Trump: “He’s a fighter,” Scherer said. “He’s not going to back down.”