Trump returns to Butler seeking bounce as election looms

It always seemed that the greatest risk to human life at the Trump rally at the Butler Farm Show grounds yesterday would come from a roof giving way under the weight of Secret Service agents stationed on them.

They covered all the obvious highpoints in all the ways that anyone who has ever seen an assassination plot movie would think of as obvious, and then did some more, to make sure.

A new one on me was a surveillance drone, tethered on a vertical line about 40 metres above the ground, which was very conspicuous on Evans city Road, the main route into and out of the rally site.

Questions had been asked almost immediately after the 13 July attempt on the life of Donald Trump; were there no drones deployed by the security forces to keep an eye on things, even if they were not resourced to put an officer on every rooftop?

After three bruising encounters with a Congressional committee investigating the assassination attempt, everything must not only be done, it must be seen to be done to keep Republican candidate Mr Trump safe.

That is why he spoke from behind a screen of bullet proof glass. It is also why Friday's rally featuring former Republican congresswoman and 6 January committee ranking member Liz Cheney and Vice President Kamala Harris also heard speeches delivered from behind a wall of bulletproof glass.

And the Congressional committee also has to start investigations into how an armed man apparently spent 12 hours camped in the bushes on the perimeter of the Trump Palm Beach golf club in Florida, in preparation for an apparent attempted assassination.

The Committee chairman, Mike Kelly - a Republican who comes from, and represents the town of Butler - is due to take the committee to Palm Beach soon to walk the ground, something they also did at Butler. There is nothing like being there to aid understanding.

Big picture considerations

Mr Kelly, like every other member of the House, also has to get himself re-elected on 5 November. It should be straightforward for a popular Representative in a pretty Republican district.

Take Butler county itself. In the last presidential election, Joe Biden beat Mr Trump in the overall state of Pennsylvania by 50.1% to 48.9%. But in Butler county, Mr Trump beat Mr Biden by 65.6% to 33.1%.

It was a similar story in 2016. In the state, Mr Trump squeezed past Hilary Clinton with a 44,292 vote margin in an election that saw around 6 million votes cast. However, in Butler, Mr Trump won 65.7% to Ms Clinton’s 29.1%.

So last night, Mr Trump was not back in Butler looking to scrape together a few extra votes in a county that is already way ahead of the State and national average in support for the Republican candidate.

This was a state and national level event. Polls published yesterday showed Ms Harris leading Mr Trump by one percentage point, 48% to 47%.But that is well within the margin of error of more than 3.5% and Mr Trump is turning up the heat in the campaign because it is so incredibly close.

What set the second Butler rally apart from the usual run of the mill campaign event was, of course, the shocking background of Thomas Matthew Crooks’ attempt to shoot Mr Trump from the roof of a building overlooking the rally site - a roof that was unguarded (not even a drone watching, it appears).

Crooks, the 20-year-old who shot at Mr Trump and killed another man, Corey Comperatore, and injured two others in the crowd, is still an enigma.

No investigating agency has established a motive for his attack against the former president.

At 6.11pm, the precise time of the shooting in July, Mr Trump stopped his speech, calling for a moment’s silence.

A bell then tolled four times, once for each of the victims. Mr Trump was number four, lightly grazed on the right ear by a bullet that did not cause him significant injury or death.

Days later we watched him dominate the Republican National Convention (RNC) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, another key battleground state where he lost to Mr Biden by just 20,000 votes.

He, his campaign, and his supporters appeared energised by the near-death experience and the shambolic performance of President Biden in their first televised debate.

However, a few days after the RNC event, Mr Biden announced he was not contesting the presidential election in November, and the campaign momentum was wrenched away from Mr Trump. The return to Butler was an effort to regain it.

He told the crowd yesterday: "Exactly 12 weeks ago, this evening, on this very ground, a cold-blooded assassin aimed to silence me and to silence the greatest movement, MAGA, in the history of our country. MAGA (Make America Great Again).

"For 16 harrowing seconds during the gunfire, time stopped as this vicious monster unleashed pure evil from his sniper's perch, not so far away. But by the hand of providence and the grace of God, that villain did not succeed in his goal. Did not come close. He did not stop our movement."

Mr Trump added that the movement will go on to win the presidential election in a month's time, and bring about a series of radical changes quickly.

"We want an America where you can get ahead and be proud of life and provide for your family, and a really decent way where we don't have crime.

"We have the fabulous military to protect us from evil. Everything has to be the best. We have to have the best schools. We have to have strong borders. We don't want bad people coming in and hurting us.

We don't want to have open borders, do we? You deserve a government that protects and respects its own citizens, that defends your sovereignty, your security and your dignity and your freedom," Mr Trump said.

He added: "You deserve a nation that builds things again, makes things better, that aims for the stars once more, and that once again commands respect, and we want to get respect like we had it four years ago.

"The entire world respected us. They respected us. They respected us more than they've ever respected us, and now they laugh at us. We can't have them laugh at us, can we?

"Above all, you deserve leadership in Washington that does not answer to the lobbyists, to the bureaucrats or to the corrupt special interests, but answers only to you, the hardworking citizens of America, of which there are a lot of them. We have a lot of them. We have a lot of them.

"Over the past eight years, those who want to stop us from achieving this future have slandered me, impeached me, indicted me, tried to throw me off the ballot, and, who knows, maybe even tried to kill me. But I've never stopped fighting for you, and I never will", he promised the crowd.

Jobs

Mr Trump also promised jobs, American manufacturing jobs.

This promise resonates in a place like butler, a neat little town, the several granite hewn buildings on main street and numerous stone-built churches attesting to a more prosperous era driven by coal mining and steel production and fabrication - products like rail carriages and military Jeeps, once upon a time. Now the big employers are the school district and medical services.

Mr Trump’s rhetoric on tariffs has been to the fore in recent weeks, promising to build a protectionist wall around American industry by levying charges on imports as part of a strategy to encourage the onshoring of jobs by big US business.

He has also dangled a carrot of tax reduction on corporate income as part of an effort to reshape the way the US does business. In Butler he added a bit more flesh to his still vague tax plans.

"The centrepiece of my plan for a manufacturing Renaissance will be a 15% 'made in America’ corporate tax rate. In other words, if you make your product in the United States, you get a rate.

"So I cut it from 39% to 21%, everyone said that was impossible. I got it done, and we had the best boom we've ever had.

"We did more revenue when we had it at 21% than when it was at 39%, think of it, much more. The following year we did much more. And then I'm going to take it from 21% to 15%, which will make us the most competitive country in the world. Nobody will be able to compete with us," Mr Trump claimed.

He also told the crowd: "But that 15% rate only goes for those who make their product in America. They have to make their product here, otherwise they pay 21%.

"And we will protect those companies moving into America and all of our existing companies with stiff tariffs placed on companies that don't move in.

"If they don't come in, if they don't want to make their product here, that's fine, but they're going to pay a tariff.

"We have to protect our companies, and that's what we're going to do. The only way they can get out of paying those tariffs is to build their plants and factories in America," he said.

The former US president was joined on the stage by Elon Musk, the tech billionaire who is possibly the richest person on the planet.

Mr Musk has been a Trump supporter for some time but was quiet about it.

The assassination attempt in Butler incensed him, and he very publicly threw his support - and that of his social media company X, formerly Twitter - behind Mr Trump.

The pair have appeared on a live chat on the X, formerly Twitter, platform, and Mr Musk has offered to be part of a commission to root out wasteful spending in the US government.

Jumping like a child

Bouncing onto the stage, jumping like a child, and wearing a black MAGA hat Mr Musk told the crowd the Democrats want to end free speech, take away people’s guns and end democracy in America.

"This election is I think the most important election of our lifetime. The other side wants to take away your freedom of speech. They want to take away your right to bear arms, they want to take away your right to vote.

"Effectively we’ve got 14 states now that don't require voter ID. California, where I used to live, has just passed a law banning voter ID for voting. I still can't believe that's real.

"So how are you supposed to have a good, proper election, if there's no ID? And free speech - free speech is the bedrock of democracy. And if people don't know what's going on, if they don't know the truth, how can you make an informed vote?

"You must have free speech in order to have democracy. That's why there’s the first amendment, and the Second Amendment is there to ensure that we have the First Amendment," he said.

Mr Murk added: "President Trump must win to preserve the Constitution. He must win to preserve democracy in America".

It was turning dark as Mr Trump came to the end of a 90-minute discourse, and the temperature was falling fast - a reminder that this is indeed October.

In 31 days, it will be 5 November and election day. And Pennsylvania is the biggest prize among the seven swing states that will decide this election.

The second Butler rally was a significant moment in the campaign to win Pennsylvania and the Presidency.