In My Hometown — Trump the Fighter
That’s my hometown: Butler, Pennsylvania. That’s where former President Donald Trump, consistently leading Joe Biden in the polls since about October, and particularly increasing that lead lately, was shot this Saturday, July 13, 2024.
I wasn’t there, but I almost was. My 16-year-old son was there. He had never been to anything like that before. He has a friend who has a friend who’s a local campaign volunteer for Donald Trump. My son thought it would be exciting to witness something historic like a former president speaking at a huge rally less than 30 minutes from our home. The last time that Trump was in Butler, for the 2020 campaign, the crowd was absolutely massive. It was stunning. It would be quite the scene to go there and witness something like that.
Let me pause here to say for the record that, as a parent, watching the Trump rally live on Newsmax TV (the only channel that was covering the entire rally from start to finish), that your immediate thought at a moment like that is whether your child is okay. Praise God, he is. But for too many agonizing moments, his mom and I weren’t sure. There was not good cell service from the Butler Farm Show grounds.
As I write, we’re getting word from news reports that Trump is okay. Praise God for that. Also as I write, no reporter has yet definitively called it a shooting. But how could it not be? Trump was bleeding, and clearly not from a firecracker.
I witnessed the shooting live on my TV, while taking notes on my laptop. My wife and I both saw it live. We heard crackling noises, like gunshots, and then saw Trump reach for his right ear, as if struck there or at least grazed, and then he and people in the crowd behind him ducked to the ground. At that moment, my wife went to her knees in our living room, praying for the former president’s safety and for our son — her child — and his friends.
The security agents then swarmed to Donald Trump, enveloping him. Not even a minute later, Trump was on his feet (with help), defiantly raising his right fist in the air and yelling, “FIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHT!!!”
At that exhortation — that moment of incredible bravado from this fighter of fighters — the crowd went nuts in support of their man. The folks at the grandstand raised their fists in the air. The people in the crowd did the same, cheering, shouting. Newsmax footage shows one Butler man flipping the bird defiantly toward media cameras.
I grew up with these people. That is truly MAGA country. I was not surprised by their reactions.
As for Donald Trump’s reaction, the photo of him with blood on the right side of his face with his fist in the air will instantly become iconic. It is now forever an image for the ages. Today, they tried to kill him, and they failed. And by “they,” I assume I’m referring to a single shooter, but you know who I mean by “they.”
Trump knows. His fist was aimed at them.
A personally disconcerting thing for me in all of this is that I had gone back and forth regarding whether to attend that rally today. My colleagues here at The American Spectator — specifically, Wlady Pleszczynski, Ellie Gardey Holmes, Melissa Mackenzie, and Jeff Lord — can attest to that. I had emailed them last night about whether I should attend the event to cover it for our magazine. I declined only this afternoon after concluding that the traffic, the crowd chaos, the lines, the heat, the humidity, were all things I preferred to avoid. I would report on the rally from home, talking to local sources, and maybe turning in a piece for Monday morning.
Instead, I’m turning in my piece right now, about 7:35 p.m. EST, before we know a lot of important details. I can say that my son and his friends are reporting by text messages from their vehicle that the security, police, military personnel, and more is a scene of utter craziness. He is telling us of word circulating among the crowd that some “poor guy” was hit by a bullet and is supposedly in “very bad shape.”
I cannot confirm that at this point. We’ll know more soon.
Actually, the AP is now reporting that the shooter is dead and someone at the rally was killed at well. God help us.
Pray for Donald Trump, for anyone who died there, for everyone at that rally, and pray for our country.
READ MORE from Paul Kengor:
Trump Reveals Liberal Hearts and Minds
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