Trump is returning to the scene of his assassination attempt. What’s changed?

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Andrew Feinberg

White House Correspondent

Donald Trump is heading back to the Butler, Pennsylvania venue where he survived an assassination attempt three months ago — but the 2024 race has dramatically changed since then.

July 13 — the day that a lone gunman opened fire at the Butler rally, killing one, and injuring others, including the former president — marked a pivotal moment in the highly contested race.

Since then, President Joe Biden dropped out of the race, a heavily scrutinized Secret Service identified its failures and underwent sweeping changes, Trump picked JD Vance as his running mate, enthusiasm for Vice President Kamala Harris grew and Trump lost his lead in the polls, and yet another assassination attempt against Trump unfolded on September 15 at his golf course.

The image of Trump triumphantly pumping his fist in the air with blood dripping across his face seems to have faded amid the race’s many fluctuations. The GOP nominee could remind voters of that visual as he returns to Butler on Saturday.

“I’m going back to Butler because I feel I have an obligation to go back to Butler. We never finished what we were supposed to do,” Trump told NewsNation earlier this week. “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. I’m fulfilling, really, an obligation.”

While the campaign told CNN that this rally will be “different,” the former president himself earlier this week vowed that the campaign event will pick up where it left off a few months ago: “I think I’ll start the speech by saying, ‘As I was saying.’”

The campaign meant this rally will differ from typical Trump campaign events because there will be a tribute to victims of the tragedy. But the rally will likely differ in other ways too.

Trump predicted the Butler venue will be the “safest place on Earth.” Perhaps that’s because security will be improved this time around.

The Secret Service came under intense scrutiny following its failure to secure the Butler venue and prevent a 20-year-old armed with an AR-15 from opening fire into the presidential candidate’s rally. Congressional hearings and a Senate Committee report revealed the numerous shortcomings by the Secret Service during the July 13 rally.

The agency’s “failures in planning, communications, security, and allocations of resources… were foreseeable, preventable, and directly related to the events resulting in the assassination attempt,” the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs report said.

Secret Service has said it has increased its security presence around Trump so he has the “highest level of security” that the agency provides.

To address communication issues, this time the Secret Service will work out of a “unified command post” with state, local and federal partners, a source in law enforcement familiar with the plan told The Independent . There will be “a large coordinated presence of law enforcement,” the source added.

Kimberly Cheatle, the head of the agency at the time of the attack, had previously acknowledged that the roof where Crooks fired his AR-15-style rifle was considered a security vulnerability. The agency experienced “technical difficulties” with its drone system on that doomed day and failed to detect Crooks’ drone, which had flown over the site for 11 minutes before he opened fire. Cheatle stepped down in the wake of the attack.

On Saturday, law enforcement officers plan to ensure the roof is secured, CNN reported. The agencies “secured some of the sight lines” and will have trailers surrounding the perimeter and drones at the site, the source said.

Trump will be surrounded by bulletproof protective glass, as he has been during his recent rallies.

The Independent has emailed representatives for the Secret Service, Butler Police and the Trump campaign for comment on the preparations for Saturday’s rally.

Elon Musk and Pennsylvania Senate candidate Dave McCormick will reportedly show support for Trump in the crowd. Relatives of Corey Comperatore, the former fire chief who was killed in the attack, as well as a supporter who was injured, will also attend Saturday’s rally, according to ABC News.

Trump hadn’t announced a running mate and was still facing Biden in the race on July 13. The media decided the president had fumbled his debate performance just a few weeks earlier.

But the playing field has changed significantly since then.

Since entering the race, the vice president’s popularity has surged. Donations, coconut emojis, and an uptick in voter registrations have flooded in.

Harris fared well against Trump in her first, and likely only, debate against him, after which she raked in numerous coveted endorsements, including Taylor Swift and Bruce Springsteen.

Despite having won the state in 2020, Biden trailed Trump in Pennsylvania at the time — and that margin only grew in favor of the former president after the assassination attempt, polling averages show.

This time around, Trump is up against Harris, who is neck-and-neck with him in the swing state, recent polls show. FiveThirtyEight polling averages have the vice president leading the former president by a 0.6 percent margin — an essential deadlock. A September poll by Franklin and Marshall showed the vice president slightly leading Pennsylvania, with 49 percent compared to Trump’s 46 percent.

Other data points toward a pro-Harris trend in the state. In the week that Joe Biden dropped out of the race, new voter registrations in Pennsylvania increased by 262 percent among Black women under 30 compared to the same week in 2020 — a demographic group that leans heavily toward Harris.

Nearly two months to the day after the July attack, Trump faced another alarming incident when a 58-year-old man allegedly camped outside the former president’s West Palm Beach golf course with a high-powered SKS-style assault rifle, waiting for the former president to pass by.

Trump and Vance have blamed Democrats for pushing “rhetoric” that allegedly fueled the September 15 assassination attempt. Last month, Trump told Fox News, referring to Biden and Harris: “Their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at, when I am the one who is going to save the country, and they are the ones that are destroying the country — both from the inside and out.”

Meanwhile, Vance argued that since there have been no attempts against Harris’ life and two against Trump: “That’s pretty strong evidence that the left needs to tone down the rhetoric and needs to cut this crap out. Somebody’s going to get hurt by it.”

For her part, Harris swiftly condemned the latest assassination attempt, saying she was “deeply disturbed” by the incident and emphasized: “I condemn political violence. We all must do our part to ensure that this incident does not lead to more to violence.”

Former President Barack Obama is set to make an appearance at a Harris campaign stop in Pittsburgh on October 10, likely offering yet another boost to her less than a month before the election.

The highly influential Democrat, who kept a distance from Biden’s re-election efforts, has come out in full force to support Harris. He praised the vice president at the Democratic National Convention in August: “America’s ready for a new chapter. America’s ready for a better story. We are ready for a President Kamala Harris.”