Saturday, October 5, 2024, 08:09
Six United States presidents have taken a bullet at some point in history, but none had previously returned to the scene of the crime to capitalize on the shock that it entailed. Donald Trump will do it tonight with a new rally in Butler (Pennsylvania), in the same outdoor setting where the bullet from a sniper, stationed on a nearby roof, grazed his ear.
If on July 13 the Secret Services bore responsibility for the failures that allowed a 19-year-old young man to climb with an AR-15 rifle to a roof, which he previously inspected with a drone, this time they have left no stone unturned. “They have practically built an entire city in there,” said a private security agent, who yesterday blocked the entrance to the Butler fairgrounds, where Trump will rise again tonight at the same time, defying luck. The turn of his head at that moment to point to an immigration graphic behind him saved him by millimeters, but his attacker, Matthew Crooks, had a clear view of the tycoon. “This time they have built everything specifically so that the stage cannot be seen from anywhere else,” explained the security agent, who had been protecting the area for almost two weeks and it will be another week until they dismantle everything that has been built around a gigantic flag of the United States.
“I’ll tell you what, when I see him go out on that stage, I’m going to cry,” said Louis Davis, a retired military man who yesterday parked his car at 1 pm in the line of those who wanted to enter at 7 am, as soon as the parking lot opened. That is, two days and one night. Trump’s rallies have become so massive that it is now customary to spend the night in the car and camp nearby. The return to that historic place, where his instinct made him come out with his fist raised and his face bloodied, shouting “Fight, fight, fight!”, is so mythical for his Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement that attendance has skyrocketed. “It was his ‘Braveheart’ moment,” Davis recalled excitedly. The Secret Services expect up to 60,000 people today and the Trump campaign raises the number to 100,000. To accommodate the huge number of cars that will descend through those narrow rural roads of deep Pennsylvania, to the small town of Butler, with 13,100 inhabitants, the authorities have set up a gigantic open field that usually serves as a landing strip. That will not prevent the monumental traffic jam that will form along those narrow winding roads, flanked by Trump signs on every porch.
The former president won this county both times by more than 60% of the votes and, after the impact of the assassination attempt, in a place where he is so loved, on November 5 he could reach 70%. “Here people took it personally,” explains Louise, a real estate agent who does not dare to give her last name, because political colors in this region are lived with more passion than football. “I have a friend who stopped talking to his father because he voted Democrat and his father died without them being reconciled,” he says. On July 13, Kendi was behind the bar at the local brewery, pouring drinks non-stop to those watching the Trump rally on television, when his customers were shocked. «They have shot him! “They have shot Trump!” he remembers hearing. «Everything became chaotic. Some ran away, others took out their phones; “There were people crying,” recalls the waitress, who won’t turn on the TV tonight, “just in case.”
Like Mel Gibson
Since that day, Trump is not just a candidate: he is a myth. “We all want a strong leader who can’t be intimidated,” says Logan Audis, a 20-year-old from Colorado who will be voting for the first time in this election and has admired Trump since he was 12, when he saw him win the presidency for the first time. In these eight years, the tabloid and reality TV mogul, who in 2016 was underestimated as a clown, has jumped into the collective imagination of those looking for a leader and now has him engraved in their memory with his fist raised a la Mel Gibson.
“Trump had no business coming back here a month before the election,” Louise objects. “He wins this county for sure, but he wants to show that he is indestructible and that he is not afraid of anything.” That is the aura that the two disturbed people who tried to kill him this summer have given him, without knowing that what does not kill strengthens. Here, in Butler, is where Trump has established himself as a god in the eyes of his followers, most of whom are convinced that the elections were stolen from him to remove him from the White House “and now they want to kill him because they know he will win again,” he says. Davis. With your help, and that of God.
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