Back to the scene of the crime. Back across the Mason-Dixon beyond Pittsburgh where early on a foggy Saturday morning the only vehicles to be seen belong to the Mongols biker club from Virginia, clad in matching leather and almost certainly hurtling towards the far northwest corner of Pennsylvania and the farm-fair field in Butler, Pennsylvania, where Donald Trump would give a rally for the second time this summer.
Back to the very place where 20-year-old Thomas Crooks made his crazed bid for infamy by managing to fire a volley of semi-automatic rifle shots that grazed the former president’s ear and killed an attendee, Corey Comperatore, on July 13th.
Crooks came within millimetres of joining the spectral cast of presidential assassins. But Trump turned his head, and Crooks, killed by snipers seconds after he fired his own shots, instead became both a meme and a shadow player in a toxic election summer.
Back to the hazy memory of that brief day or two afterwards when the shocking violence brought about the hope, as articulated by Trump, that he wished to unify the country. Back to Butler, where the homesteaders along Buttercup Road offer easy-exit parking for $40 and where the big, sunken field where the original atrocity took place is already crowded by the Maga faithful well before midday. The former president is not due to speak until 5pm – and has a habit of turning up fashionably late – but nobody was taking any chances on missing out.
“It is like a redemption,” Loren Stephenson, a Butler native, says of Trump’s decision to come back. She was in the crowd on July 13th with her brother Mark and like many attendees, they are thrilled that this event is happening.
“It matters enormously,” Mark Stephenson says. “Because the last thing we wanted our hometown to be known for was for trying to kill the president. So, his coming back here is everything.
“This might be one of the last times we see this guy alive,” he continues after a pause.
“This may be one of the last times that we even get to vote! People have no idea what’s coming. Let’s consider Trump gets in and is president-elect. They are going to throw riots in every major city. They got a Bill on the table to remove Trump’s ability to declare insurrection after that happens and they have plans to invalidate him before the inauguration. It is completely illegal, but we are way past that now. The alternative is they just steal it for Kamala and we don’t have a country left. Either way we are going to have a new way forward. States and regions are going to have to get together. We don’t need the federal government any more.”
His sister listens to this carefully before adding: “I’m a little bit more optimistic.”
The Stephensons point to where they were located when Crooks’s shots rang over their head and describe the original confusion – the mistaken belief they were hearing firecrackers, the sudden appearance of Secret Service [agents] everywhere, yells to get down and a fast dawning that the worst was happening. It was only later, on television, that they saw Trump’s instinctive fist-raised-against-the-Stars-and-Stripes-and-blue-sky images.
“We were right beside there and we all questioned why there was no security on that building. There’s a lot of questions that don’t have answers,” says Loren Stephenson.
“I’m a lifelong registered independent here, but you would almost have to be out of your mind not to think that something was strange, what happened that day.”
“There’s a lot of peculiar s**t that came out of July 13th,” her brother says.
And the ghosts of that day wander freely now through the sunshine and food stalls here in early October. Many supporters walk around in commemorative ‘I was here’ T-shirts, and people pointing to the sheds behind the staging area trying to recreate the roof where Crooks had lain.
And the theme of the day revolves around a commemoration of July 13th, with a series of moving tributes to Cory Comperatore and the various medical and security personnel who rushed to help. At around 3.30pm, thousands point their phones skywards to capture the marvel of the Trump airplane flying over the field. Less than an hour later, vice-presidential nominee JD Vance is on the stage.
If Vance changed his demeanour with Tim Walz at Tuesday night’s vice-presidential debate in New York to strike a more pleasant note in a performance even detractors found chillingly impressive, he returned to attack mode here, ushering the crowd’s collective memory back to the aftermath of July 13th before blaming the Democrats for the deterioration of the tone of this election campaign.
“Sadly, our opponents have not heeded Abraham Lincoln’s words and listened to the better angels of our nature. Even after that terrible assassination attempt that took one man’s life and nearly took many others, they continue to use dangerous inflammatory language. The media has continued to call Donald Trump, the guy who actually won his primary, a threat to democracy.
“A Democratic senator called Donald Trump an existential threat to our democracy. Kamala Harris said that he was attacking the foundations of our democracy. I think you will all join me in saying to Kamala Harris: how dare you talk about threats to democracy. Donald Trump took a bullet for democracy. What the hell have you done?”
The people cheered. Vance’s turn here felt like confirmation that something has shifted over the past week. The euphoric wave of Democratic jubilation after Harris replaced Joe Biden as nominee disoriented the Trump campaign for over a month. But the polling suggests a stubbornly and claustrophobically tight election result and the past week has heard worried noises from Democratic observers that the epic surge of the convention week in Chicago has stalled a little, while Trump and Vance have recovered their voice.
And returning to this field, to the scene of the shooting, has sharpened the crowd’s sense of cause. While we wait for Trump to appear, James Miller a retiree from Chicora, says he has never known a political climate like this.
“This feels like you have a group of people … the Democrats are doing stuff now and can get away with it because of the upper authorities. It upsets you that they are not honouring the oath they took to protect the United States. They are not following the constitution. They are doing what they want to stay in power.
“In my mind – I might be totally wrong – but they want to get all these immigrants in and then they are saying: you are in, you can vote. Now I watched TV the other day and I find out they took $1.5 billion out of Fema [Federal Emergency Management Agency], which is for United States disasters, and used it for the illegals.”
It was a hot, hot day for October. Many Trump fans had turned up at dawn, and the staging area is a natural bowl – northwestern Pennsylvania’s answer to Breffni Park. Devotion to Donald Trump requires enormous stamina and a limitless appetite for mainstream classic rock coming through a tinny sound system. Trump himself did not make his appearance until shortly before six o’clock.
“Thank you very much. A very big thank you to Pennsylvania and”, he said, pausing as the big-screen graphic on border patrols that had caused him to turn his head as Crooks fired and thereby saved his life was once again broadcast in the field so Trump could deliver his punchline, “as I was saying”.
The moment was neatly delivered and drew howls of approval and that was it: the circle was complete. The bullet had missed.
Over the next 90 minutes, the event threw pretty much everything at the crowd: the tolling of the bells, a tenor, Elon Musk – “good at rockets” as Trump had declared earlier this year when the pair began to get along famously but, unfortunately, terrible at public speaking. The crowd seemed unsure as to how to receive this nervy, giggly billionaire whose repeated message was that Republicans needed to get out to vote.
But as the sun slipped out of sight, the evening belonged to Donald Trump as he eased into what has become a familiar rallying riff, using the same lilting tone as he moved from casting all undocumented migrants as murderers and insane to the unreliability of teleprompters to the menace posed by “the radical leftist” Kamala to the unfounded allegations that the government is failing North Carolina in its response to the hurricane disaster. His message will not change between now and November 5th.
And the vast majority of the crowd stayed. But hundreds left too, anxious to find their cars while it was still bright. They listened to Trump on their phones as they trekked across the fields towards the rows of cars and trucks, past the endless array of merch stalls and further away from the scene of July’s near atrocity.
It was something of an exorcism, this sunny day, for the Republicans of this corner of Pennsylvania, a chance to relive a day that came within a hair’s breadth of delivering a psychic wound on American political and civic life but instead became part of the Trump mythology.
And they believed Trump as he told them: “I just want to let you know that I return to Butler in the aftermath of tragedy and heartache to deliver a simple message to the people of Pennsylvania and the people of America … our movement to make America great again stands stronger, prouder.”
And on he went, talking and talking until it was becoming dark in Butler – and cold.