Back to the “scene of the crime”: Trump at the rally where he was almost killed

Donald Trump returned Saturday to the “scene of the crime”: a small town in the crucial state of Pennsylvania where on July 13 a young man shot the former president of the United States, who narrowly escaped death.

A month before the November 5 presidential election, the reappearance in the town of Butler of the 78-year-old Republican candidate promises to be colorful.

Donald Trump will have at his side his running mate J.D. Vance, the richest man in the world Elon Musk, relatives of victims of the shootings — which left one dead in addition to the shooter Thomas Crooks, 20 — and law enforcement officers who protected Mr. Trump.

The businessman and populist tribune had immediately grasped the scope and impact of the July 13 shock: his ear bleeding, visibly grazed by a bullet, protected and evacuated by Secret Service agents, the septuagenarian remained standing with his fist raised in defiance in front of the cameras, exhorting his supporters to “fight, fight, fight.”

The scene, immortalized under a large American flag, went around the world.

“Butler has become a very famous place, it's like a monument now,” Donald Trump declared at a recent campaign rally in Milwaukee.

– “Bullet for democracy” –

According to his team, this is the very place where he “took a bullet for democracy”.

Donald Trump supporters in front of an XXL American flag, in Butler, July 13, 2024 © AFP – Rebecca DROKE

The Secret Service, the police force that protects the sitting president, his predecessors and high-ranking officials, had shot dead the young gunman perched on the roof of a building a few hundred meters away.

The police had evacuated the premises, which they immediately declared a “crime scene”.

The Secret Service, whose head Kimberly Cheatle had to resign, had imposed for a time that Mr. Trump would only speak in covered rooms this summer, before authorizing him to speak outdoors again, but behind bulletproof glass.

On July 13, the electoral campaign — already extremely tense at the time between the candidate and outgoing Democratic president Joe Biden and former President Trump who wants to return to the White House — had shifted into another dimension.

The politician, who has shaken up American democracy for a decade, had been talking for a few minutes that day about his favorite topics, immigration and crime, when eight shots rang out.

We then see Donald Trump turn his head slightly, put his hand to his ear and lower.

– “They won't get you” –

Appearing on the stage, Secret Service agents surround him and evacuate him under the shock and cries of the crowd.

A journalist from the AFP then hears a man shout: “they won't get you.”

Donald Trump later told supporters that he immediately inquired about the number of victims: a firefighter, Corey Comperatore, had been killed and two people injured.

A microphone left open on stage also allowed him to be heard asking the Secret Service to “let him pick up (his) shoes.”

“We'll be there on Saturday. It's going to be a big event, really something important and we're going to pay tribute to Corey (Comperatore) and the two gentlemen who were seriously injured,” Donald Trump recently promised.

Australian newspapers, in Melbourne on July 15, 2024, two days after the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump © AFP – William WEST

This assassination attempt, followed by a second in September on the former president's golf course in Florida, caused shock in the country and abroad. The United States is marked by a violent political history: the last president to be killed was John Kennedy in 1963.

Eight days after the first assassination attempt, on July 21, and following a disastrous debate against Donald Trump, Joe Biden, very weakened at 81, threw in the towel under pressure from his own Democratic camp, leaving the place to his vice-president Kamala Harris.

The two rivals have been engaged in a very acrimonious fight since then, like their only televised debate in September.

The two drastically opposed visions of the candidates show that as the November 5 election approaches, American society is on edge.

The electoral centers of the most disputed counties, targets of intense tensions four years ago, have been transformed into fortresses, protected by wrought iron fences and metal detectors.

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