Donald Trump returned on Saturday to the “crime scene”: 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 had narrowly escaped death .
One month before the presidential election on November 5, 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 JD 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 years old – and the forces of order that protected Mr. Trump.
The businessman and populist tribune immediately grasped the scope and impact of the shock of July 13: 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, urging 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 said during a recent campaign rally in Milwaukee.
– “Ball for democracy” –
According to his team, this is the place where he “took a bullet for democracy”.
The Secret Service, the police which protect the sitting president, his predecessors and high dignitaries, had shot dead the young gunman perched on the roof of a building a few hundred meters away.
The police had the scene evacuated, which they immediately declared a “crime scene”.
The Secret Service, whose head Kimberly Cheatle had to resign, had for a time imposed on Mr. Trump that he only speak this summer in indoor rooms, before authorizing him again to speak in the open air, but behind armored glass.
On July 13, the electoral campaign – already extremely tense 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, has been speaking for a few minutes that day about his favorite themes, immigration and crime, when eight shots ring out.
We then see Donald Trump turn his head slightly, put his hand to his ear and bend down.
– “They won’t get you” –
Appearing on the stage, Secret Service agents surround him and evacuate him to the astonishment and cries of the crowd.
An AFP journalist then heard a man shout: “They won’t get you.”
Donald Trump later told supporters that he immediately inquired about the number of casualties: a firefighter, Corey Comperatore, had been killed and two people injured.
A microphone left open on the stage also allowed us to hear him ask 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 seriously injured gentlemen,” Donald Trump recently promised.
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 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 room for his vice-president Kamala Harris.
The two rivals have since engaged in a very acrimonious fight, like their only televised debate in September.
The two drastically opposed visions of the candidates show that as the November 5 vote approaches, American society is on edge.
The electoral centers of the most contested counties, targets of high tensions four years ago, have turned into fortresses, protected by wrought iron fences and metal detectors.
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