Butler, Pennsylvania
Jim, a 77-year-old retired electrician from outside Cleveland, Ohio, is showing me pictures on his phone. Lots and lots of pictures. He struck up a conversation after we’d been standing near one another for the better part of an hour, baking under a hot autumn sun about 50 yards from the spot where Donald Trump was shot in July.
Jim was not there that day, as he couldn’t make it on time. Since 2015, he has taken his teenage grandson Justin from rally to rally. He says he always threw his union’s endorsements in the trash. He says his dad served in Normandy.
He finds a picture from a cemetery. This is his father’s grave, and smoothed over the top of the headstone is a massive red, white, and blue “Veterans for Trump” sticker. Jim’s father passed away in 2009, but he knows both his parents would have loved Trump.
It’s 2 in the afternoon in the 13,000-person town of Butler. It is, of course, newly famous for what transpired the night of 13 July, when a bullet clipped Trump’s ear and the former president rose from a Secret Service pile, turned to the crowd, and implored them to “Fight, fight, fight.”
J.D. Vance is due to speak at 4:30, followed by Trump at 5:00. Secret Service drones fly overhead. One curious attendee asks a cop to point out which building the would-be assassin fired from back in July, yet nobody feels unsafe.
It’s business as usual here in northwestern Pennsylvania. Regulars greet each other with familiarity as Trump’s warm-up speakers build suspense. One of them quips that Trump rallies feel like rock concerts but without weed, and a man walks by me in a t-shirt emblazoned with the moment Elon Musk smoked marijuana on Joe Rogan’s podcast. Musk is due to speak later with Trump, but beforehand Vance cites scripture from the stage as an audience member angrily yells about the “fucking Democrats”. A man from Kentucky named Raymond tells me he’s here to be part of history.
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