Trump returns to Butler for rally at site of assassination attempt

Donald Trump is returning Saturday to the Pennsylvania venue where he narrowly survived an assassination attempt in July, holding a high-profile rally in what his allies are billing as a key moment as the 2024 race for the White House enters its final month.

The former president described this weekend’s trip to Butler, an hour’s drive north of Pittsburgh in what could be the election’s most important swing state, as unfinished business.

“I said that day when I was shot, I said, ‘We’re coming back. We’re going to come back.’ And I’m fulfilling a promise,” Trump said in an interview with NewsNation this week. “I’m fulfilling, really, an obligation.”

But while the venue is the same, everything else about the 2024 presidential race has been turned on its head since a gunman fired on the crowd and a bullet grazed Trump’s ear only minutes after he started speaking that early summer night, killing one attendee and injuring two others.

The assassination attempt, followed by a separate incident last month while Trump was playing golf in Florida, underscored the remarkable volatility and unpredictability of the closing stretch of a presidential race that has been historic on a variety of fronts.

President Joe Biden, facing mounting pressure within his own party after a poor debate showing in June, dropped out eight days after the shooting in Butler. And Vice President Kamala Harris’ late ascension to the top of the Democratic ticket shifted the election’s dynamics and forced Trump to adapt to a much different challenge than the 2020 rematch for which both parties had been preparing.

Now, with one month left until November 5, early and mail-in voting are already underway across a number of states, massive television advertising buys are in place and the battleground map has come into focus.

Five days after the shooting, as Trump captivated Republicans in his convention speech in Milwaukee, the former president vowed to never again mention details of the assassination attempt.

It was a short-lived pledge, with the Butler shooting playing a recurring role in his rallies ever since. A crowd in Erie listened with rapt attention at a rally last weekend as Trump talked about returning to the scene of the shooting, which he described as steadily growing into “a big tourist site” since July 13.

“We’re going back. That’s a big deal. We have a lot of people coming,” Trump said. “I think I’ll start the speech by saying, ‘As I was saying.’”

The image of Trump, with his face coated in blood as he thrusts his fist into the air, is commemorated on shirts, flags and other pieces of merchandise on sale at his rallies. It has also become an enduring metaphor for the devotion his loyal supporters hold for him.

“Everybody up there, they were amazing,” Trump told the Erie crowd, some of whom cheered when he asked if any of them had been present at the Butler rally. “They had my back. They saw that we were in trouble.”

The event Saturday at Butler Farm Show Inc. is expected to be “different” from a typical Trump rally, a senior Trump campaign adviser told CNN. Instead, Trump plans to use his speech as somewhat of a remembrance for the victims that day.

The former president plans to honor the memory of Corey Comperatore, a firefighter who died while shielding his family from the bullets. Comperatore’s wife, daughters and sisters will be on hand Saturday. Trump also plans to recognize the two other victims injured in the assassination attempt, David Dutch and James Copenhaver, as well as thank his personal Secret Service detail for surrounding him on stage.

However, Trump speeches have been billed as departures in tone and substance from his typical remarks before — only to see Trump return to familiar topics and attacks on political rivals, as he did on the closing night of the Republican National Convention.

In a clear sign of the significance Trump’s campaign is assigning to the event, his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, will attend — as will Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk and singer Lee Greenwood.

Before the first assassination attempt, both Trump’s campaign and his detail had suggested the former president get the same security and resources of a sitting president for various events, but were rebuffed, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

“It finally bit us in the ass,” one of the sources said.

Secret Service officials say the failures of July 13, when radio calls that a man was on the roof of a nearby building never made it to the agents protecting Trump and when the agency failed to communicate who was responsible for the building’s security, have been addressed for this Saturday’s rally.

One federal official familiar with the planning told CNN that, unlike the day Trump was shot, the Secret Service and local law enforcement will be in one, unified command center in order to quickly communicate any threats or issues with each other.

Other enhancements that should have been established the day Thomas Matthew Crooks nearly assassinated the former president will also be in place on Saturday, the source told CNN, including a counter drone system which was not online until nearly an hour after Crooks flew a drone over the rally site.

According to a Senate report, the operator had difficulty getting the system to work that day and confessed he had less than an hour of training on the drone system.

The federal official also told CNN that the group of buildings where Crooks took his position will be tightly secured Saturday.

“There will be people on the roof,” the official said of the building, adding that there will be a “much higher security footprint.”

“You’re going to see a lot more enhancements,” the official said.

Trump will be surrounded by ballistic glass when he takes the stage, an added measure put in place at his campaign events shortly after the shooting this summer.

The Pennsylvania State Police will also be taking a more active role in security this time around and more local law enforcement will be present for securing the area.

While local officers previously complained about a lack of meetings and lack of direction from the Secret Service during the rally in July, the agency is expected to give much more direct and explicit directions for who is securing which areas.

“We are coordinating closely with the Pennsylvania State Police as well as local law enforcement in and around Butler Township. We are also leveraging other federal security resources to expand personnel and technology,” Secret Service Chief of Communications Anthony Guglielmi said in a statement Friday.

Ahead of the rally in Butler, the campaign held extensive conversations as well as delivered a presentation to the city of Butler, detailing the scope of the event and other planning details for city officials.

Targeting key counties and constituencies

In the race’s closing stretch, Trump and Harris are largely focused on seven key swing states: the “blue wall” of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and the Sun Belt battlegrounds of Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina.

More than $100 million worth of presidential advertising is set to air in the opening week of October. Democrats have more than $60 million worth of ad bookings between October 1 and October 7, while Republicans have about $41 million reserved, according to AdImpact data.

The largest share of that spending is focused on Pennsylvania, where Democrats will spend $11.1 million and Republicans will spend $12.5 million. The parties have more than $115 million, nearly evenly split, booked on the Keystone State’s airwaves through the end of the race.

The campaigns are trying to win over a sliver of persuadable Americans, even as they feverishly work to ensure their supporters actually show up to vote.

But the fight for the White House is also being waged on intensely local terrain, with outsized attention being paid to swing counties inside swing states that could tip the balance of a razor-thin race. Harris is blasting Trump on health care in Wisconsin, while Trump is hammering Harris on taxes in Georgia.

Republican and Democratic strategists tell CNN they do not believe the battleground map will expand – or contract – in the final 30-day push to Election Day.

No more presidential debates are currently scheduled, which means opportunities for moments that fundamentally alter the trajectory of the presidential contest could be impossible for either candidate to find — and more targeted appeals are coming into focus.

Harris has an edge among independent voters in Wisconsin, a new Marquette Law poll found, leading Trump by 22 percentage points. Her appearance Thursday with former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney in Ripon, Wisconsin, the birthplace of the Republican Party, was aimed at trying to accelerate those gains, aides said.

Both campaigns are branching away from traditional television interviews — Trump declined a CBS “60 Minutes” interview — but embracing independent podcasts and online shows aimed at new and infrequent voters, as well as key constituencies.

One focus of Harris’ campaign is Latino voters in Pennsylvania, in a bid to stop Trump from eating away at Democrats’ traditionally large margins of victory among non-White voters. That effort has been on display at events like one vice presidential nominee Tim Walz, the Minnesota governor, held in Bethlehem last month. He pledged to continue supporting the efforts of Puerto Rico to rebuild after Hurricane Maria — an appeal aimed at Pennsylvania Latino voters who are largely of Puerto Rican heritage.

The Harris campaign is also poised to get a boost from former President Barack Obama, who will kick off a four-week push to bolster Harris’ candidacy starting Thursday in Pittsburgh.

CNN’s Camila DeChalus, David Wright, Kristen Holmes and Zachary Cohen contributed to this report.