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BUTLER, Pennsylvania — Donald Trump paid tribute to the man who died by bullets intended for the former president. He described, this time from behind ballistic glass, the “16 harrowing seconds” of gunfire that took place here just 12 weeks ago. And he vowed to “never yield, not even in the face of death.”
And then, after a little more than 20 minutes, Trump moved on.
“We’re here for a reason, and that’s to win,” Trump said at his rally on Saturday at the scene of the first assassination attempt against him. He said he was also there to honor Corey Comperatore, the volunteer fire chief who was killed in this very field while shielding his family from flying bullets. “But Corey wants us to win, too.”
In many ways, Trump’s supporters, who gathered to witness his triumphant return to the farm show grounds where he’d stood mere centimeters from death just 84 days ago, have moved on, too.
They wanted to hear Trump deliver the speech he had planned to in July. They wanted him to talk about immigration. The former president was, after all, not far from two places — Springfield, Ohio, and Charleroi, Pennsylvania — that he and his running mate, JD Vance, have helped turn into flashpoints in the nation’s immigration debate by spreading conspiracy theories about Haitian migrants. They also wanted him to address the crime that they believe is running rampant from the southern border to their neighborhoods hundreds of miles away.
And so Trump’s own supporters, gathering nearly three months later in the same place where a would-be assassin could have altered the course of the election, confirmed one of this race’s most baffling phenomenons: that the shooting no longer seems to matter.
“I think we’re over that, honestly,” said Linda Carson, a nurse from Charleroi, as she leaned against a metal barrier, an American-flag-themed Trump hat shielding her forehead from the blazing sun. “I don’t think [the attempts on his life] are over. But I think we’ve moved on. I think we’re all focusing on the election.”
Tens of thousands of Trump’s supporters flocked to this grassy field to show support for the former president and praise him for returning to the site. For many in the crowd — some wearing black T-shirts emblazoned with Trump’s face and the phrase “I was there” — it was an opportunity to heal from the shooting that stunned this steel town of roughly 13,000 and to honor Comperatore and the two rallygoers who were injured that July day.
And for those from Butler and the surrounding county, it was a chance to reshape the narrative about their rural swath of western Pennsylvania that has been irreversibly marked by tragedy.
Trump opened his rally with somber tributes to both the slain and injured and to the law enforcement officers and first responders who leapt into action that day, saying the site “is now a monument to the valor of our first responders, to the resilience of our fellow citizens and to the sacrifice of a loving and devoted father.”
When Trump called for a moment of silence at 6:11 p.m. — exactly 12 weeks to the minute after the gunman opened fire — his supporters removed their red MAGA hats and bowed their heads. Parents hugged their children close.
“The world’s unsafe, and he makes us feel a little safer because he’s not afraid,” said Susan Lybarger, a Republican from Crawford County, Pennsylvania, who was at the July 13 rally and returned to Butler on Saturday. “If he can come back, we can come back. And we can finish what we started.”
Trump’s return to Butler was as much a moment of personal triumph for him and his supporters as it was a tactical move by the former president. Four weeks before an election that has shifted away from his favor, Trump sought to recapture the energy — and sympathy — that surged toward his campaign in the hours and days after the shooting, but waned in subsequent weeks and barely registered after a second attempt on his life just three weeks ago.
“We’ve bled together,” he said at one point. “Twelve weeks ago, we all took a bullet for America,” he said at another.
His supporters milled about the fairgrounds in bedazzled Trump-Vance baseball caps and T-shirts plastered with the former president’s raised fist and a message of defiance: “YOU MISSED.” When a medical situation temporarily paused the rally, attendees broke into an impromptu rendition of the national anthem — putting the patriotism that has long powered Trump’s movement on full display.
But throughout the day, signs of the realities of a close election crept into every corner of one of the former president’s most consequential rallies.
In the long and winding entry line, chants of “fight, fight, fight” were interspersed with calls to register to vote and to cast ballots early and by mail — two options Republicans once reviled but are now actively encouraging as they look to cut into a Democratic advantage. People carried buckets collecting cash they said was intended for victims of Hurricane Helene — which tore through Florida’s Big Bend region and went on to ravage western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee, and that Republicans repeatedly used on Saturday to hammer Democrats for shirking their responsibility to the nation’s citizens in a time of crisis.
As they waited — for hours to get inside the gates, and then again for Trump to speak — conversations among rallygoers turned to the nation’s perceived ailments that they hoped he would address in his remarks: the economy, crime and, most of all, immigration.
And while some attendees said they believe Trump will win on Nov. 5 by a wide margin, others raised alarms about how drastically Trump’s political fortunes have changed since he was last here. Two days after a bullet pierced his ear on July 13, Trump arrived at his nominating convention in Milwaukee as something akin to a martyr, his party a picture of unusual unity even if the former president himself swiftly abandoned that messaging. His polling margin over President Joe Biden was widening.
But then Biden, reeling from a poor debate performance against Trump and facing a rebellion from within his own party, dropped out of the race. Vice President Kamala Harris’ entrance upended not just Trump’s campaign, but also Republicans’ theory that he could leverage the first attempt on his life to coast back into the White House.
Trump is now running in a close race against Harris. The two are effectively tied in the critical battleground of Pennsylvania, per polling averages, while Harris holds a slight edge in national surveys.
“It’s clearly going to be a tight race between him and Kamala,” said Mark Leyenaar, who traveled to the rally from the Pittsburgh suburb of Allison Park with his young son. “Kamala obviously brings some freshness into the race from the past couple of elections,” he said, and after years of Trump and Biden, “some people may be attracted to that.”
Jerry Quinto, a Republican from Amarillo, Texas, who traveled to his native Pennsylvania to attend Saturday’s rally, is seeing literal signs of trouble: In his neighborhood in Texas, Quinto said, he’s never seen a yard sign for a Democratic candidate. Now, he said, there are five for Harris on his block alone.
“I’m afraid he’s not doing as well as I want him to,” Quinto said.
If Saturday posed the question of whether the apparent assassination attempts against Trump still held salience — one set up by dramatic videos highlighting the former president’s resolve and speeches from local officials testifying to Butler’s resilience — the answer on the ground was that his MAGA faithful were ready to move on.
“I do think he needs to touch on it, because it’s a reality. But you cannot let it outweigh the things that we need to do for the country to get us back on track,” said Tina Hiotis, a Republican from Erie, Pennsylvania, who was attending the rally with her husband. “You know, I’ve got grandchildren. I am so scared for them.”
Irie Sentner contributed to this report.
