Trump to rally again at site of the first assassination attempt against him
Former President Donald Trump will return to Butler, Pennsylvania, on Oct. 5, holding a rally at the same site where he survived an assassination attempt in July, his campaign announced Wednesday.
Trump’s return to Butler, where he was grazed by a gunman’s bullet in a shooting that also killed one man and injured two others, will take place exactly one month before Election Day.
Trump has repeatedly said he would return to Butler. Just weeks after the shooting, he wrote in a post on Truth Social that he planned to return for a “BIG AND BEAUTIFUL RALLY” that would honor Corey Comperatore, a volunteer firefighter and father of two who was fatally shot after throwing himself over his family members to shield them from bullets.
The Secret Service has recently faced significant questions about its operations, including how the shooter was able to climb onto a warehouse and fire eight rounds at Trump. The assassination attempt was the first shooting of a current or former president since 1981.
And with the Secret Service already under intense scrutiny, Trump faced another assassination attempt this month — at his golf course in West Palm Beach, Florida, where the Secret Service spotted a rifle barrel pointed toward where Trump was playing.
Though little remains known about what motivated the shooter in Butler, the former president has portrayed himself as a political near-martyr. He has claimed at times that Democratic rhetoric motivated the assassination attempt, while at others suggesting that the shooting had ties to other countries unhappy with his policies.
In a speech Wednesday in North Carolina, Trump suggested that the shooting in Butler was linked to continuing threats against him from Iran, even as officials have stressed that there is no evidence to link the two.
On the campaign trail, Trump often marvels at how close he came to being more seriously injured. His supporters and his campaign have embraced images of Trump immediately after the shooting, bloodied and raising his fist triumphantly, as a symbol of their political movement. And his words to the crowd of his supporters after the episode — “Fight, fight, fight!” — have become a rallying cry.
Trump’s second rally in Butler will most likely have a similar setup to the one in July, and the venue — the grounds of the Butler Farm Show — will be the same. But since the shooting, Trump now stands behind what appears to be protective ballistic glass when he holds rallies outdoors.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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