Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump will on Saturday, October 5, 2024, return to the site in Butler, Pennsylvania in the United States, where a gunman tried to assassinate him in July.
Former President Trump will be accompanied by his running mate, JD Vance, and X owner Elon Musk, who has funded conservative and right-wing groups in recent years.
Trump has repeatedly insisted he wanted to return to the site of the shooting in which one man was killed and two attendees were wounded before the sniper was shot dead.
“Butler has become quite a famous place – it’s like a monument now,” the Republican candidate said at a recent rally in Milwaukee.
Trump’s campaign said “he took a bullet for democracy” in Butler, and that he would speak behind protective glass on his return.
The former president was six minutes into a campaign speech in a scorching field and turning his head to look at a chart of immigration statistics, when eight shots rang out.
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Trump winced and grabbed his ear, ducking down behind his podium as Secret Service agents flooded the open-air stage.
Surrounded by bodyguards and with blood trickling across his face, Trump raised his fist and shouted “fight, fight, fight” to the crowd – providing his campaign with a now iconic image.
“The first thing I said is, ‘How many people are dead?’ Because, you know, we had a massive crowd. As far as the eye could see,” AFP quoted Trump as saying recently.
Trump’s first words, captured by the stage microphone, were “let me get my shoes”, corroborated by witness Erin Autenreith, who was sitting in the first row.
Though his ear was apparently grazed by one of the bullets fired by Thomas Crooks from an AR-15 type rifle, Trump emerged otherwise unscathed.
The Secret Service – charged with protecting presidents, candidates, and foreign dignitaries – came in for withering criticism for failing to secure the building from where the shots were fired, just a few hundred feet away from the stage.
The attempt on the business mogul’s life at the shooting site was the first of a string of dramas that has shaken up the White House race, capped by President Joe Biden’s shock withdrawal and replacement by Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic candidate.
Then on September 15, a man was apprehended after being seen at Trump’s Florida golf course wielding a rifle and a GoPro camera in what the FBI said was a second assassination attempt.
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