‘Good versus evil’: Trump returns to the scene of the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania

To hear it from attendees, speakers, vice presidential candidate JD Vance, the former president’s middle son and even Donald Trump himself, it was nothing short of a miracle that Trump survived the attempt on his life at this very spot 84 days ago .

“I believe there was divine intervention so he didn’t end up dead after he was shot,” said Abigail Jones, a 43-year-old Trump supporter from Pittsburgh, one of the thousands who trekked to see Trump return to West Pennsylvania. Saturday. “And so if God saved his life that day, there must be a reason for it, because God uses people.”

Lara Trump, the former president’s daughter-in-law and his hand-picked chairman of the Republican National Committee, told the crowd at the Butler Farm Show fairgrounds that God spared the former president’s life “not once, but twice.” , referring to the gunman arrested last month outside Trump’s golf club in Palm Beach.

But Lara Trump took that idea to its darkest extreme when she framed the 2024 election as “no longer a fight between Republicans versus Democrats, left versus right.” It’s good versus evil.”

Trump’s return to Butler, where a gunman grazed his ear with a bullet on July 13, was a chaotic split screen for much of it. The speakers especially praised Trump’s resilience, praised the physical and religious forces that protected him, and paid tribute to the man who was killed that day, Corey Comperatore, with a moment of silence and a live performance by a well-known opera tenor.

There were moments of silence between songs that filled the time between speakers – and an hour-long line for funnel cake. If you were far enough away from the stage, in the grass, it was sometimes difficult to hear what was happening on stage, far from the norm for a Trump rally.

But there was no shortage of the things that make a Trump rally a Trump rally: Provocative shirts from an Amazon warehouse (“Missed Me,” with Trump flashing two middle fingers were popular this weekend, as were references to pets) and nasty rhetoric from the speakers. There were no calls to lower the political temperature, such as Trump’s brief call for unity at the Republican National Convention just days after the close call in Butler.

Vance, who turned in a more subdued performance in this week’s vice presidential debate, suggested that Democrats were responsible for inciting the Butler plot — even though police have never discovered a motive for the shooter, and what little was known about his political preferences indicates his ties. were mixed.

“When that didn’t work, they tried to jail him. And with all the hate they expressed towards him… it was only a matter of time before someone tried to kill him,” Vance said. “I think you will all say to Kamala Harris, as I did, how dare you talk about threats to democracy. Donald Trump took a bullet for democracy.”

Trump, who sat in bulletproof glass during his remarks, also blamed his opponents for orchestrating a campaign to destroy his life and the country. Over the past eight years, the Republican candidate said, “Those who want to keep us from achieving this future have slandered me, denounced me, sued me, tried to throw me off the ballot and — who knows — maybe even tried to kill me. ”

“We have a bad world,” Trump said, “we have a very sick world.”

Trump used his return to the fairgrounds to continue to portray himself as a fighter for his most fervent supporters. “I will never bow down. I will never break. I will never give in even when faced with death itself,” he said.

Many of the people there Saturday attended Trump’s rally in July. Those who spoke to HuffPost recalled an unusually quiet scene when it became clear there was a gunman who had shot at Trump. For the most part, they felt safe returning to the fairgrounds three months later.

“I was down here,” said Steve Nicklas, a retired teacher, pointing to a location a few feet closer to the stage than where he was now standing. “The audience was very calm. It was incredible. They told everyone to get down – people did. They said this event was over and people were leaving (quickly). There was no stampede.”

Kathleen Marshall, a 43-year-old from Butler, was also there. “We knew what we had to do, but there were others who were kind of in shock,” said Marshall, an active-duty Army member. Before Trump stood up that day, “people started to panic, you could feel the ripple through the crowd. (Then) he got up again, and everyone got up with him, and that calmed everyone down.

Marshall said she would not return to Butler to see Trump again, but changed her mind at the last minute. “We’re not running,” she said.

Jim Snyder, a Virginia retiree and member of the pro-gun Virginia Citizens Defense League — which handed out stickers reading “guns save lives” — likened Trump’s return to the stump in Butler as a “Phoenix rising… you fall off. the horse you get back on.

Brandi Novosel, a 34-year-old healthcare worker from Butler, said: “I’m proud of (Trump) because a lot of people wouldn’t have come back.”

Eric Trump, Lara Trump’s husband, described in a shrill voice how his father raised a fist in the air as “blood ran down his face.”

“They tried to take away someone we all loved,” he said, also mentioning the death of Comperatore, a volunteer firefighter who died while trying to protect his wife and daughters from the gunfire.

“I love you all so much, I really mean it,” Eric Trump told the crowd, not long before his father took the stage. “This isn’t politics, guys.”