Trump returns to Butler for a rally at the site of the attack

CNN
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Donald Trump returns on Saturday to the Pennsylvania venue where he narrowly survived an assassination attempt in July, hosting a high-profile rally in what his allies have called a pivotal 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.

“The day I got shot, I said, 'We're coming back.' We will come back.' And I’m fulfilling a promise,” Trump said in an interview with NewsNation this week. “I’m really fulfilling a commitment.”

But while the venue is the same, everything else about the 2024 presidential election has been turned upside down since a gunman fired into the crowd and a bullet grazed Trump's ear just minutes after he began speaking that early summer night, killing one participant and injured two others.

The assassination, followed by another incident last month when Trump was golfing in Florida, underscored the remarkable volatility and unpredictability of the closing stages of a presidential campaign that was historic in many ways.

President Joe Biden, facing increasing pressure within his own party after a poor debate in June, dropped out eight days after the Butler shooting. And Vice President Kamala Harris' late rise to the top spot among the Democratic candidates changed the dynamics of the election and forced Trump to prepare for a very different challenge than the 2020 rematch that both parties had been preparing for.

Now, with just a month until November 5, early and mail-in voting is already underway in a number of states, massive television ad buys have occurred and the battleground map has come into focus.

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

It was a short-lived promise, as the Butler shooting has played a recurring role at his rallies ever since. A crowd in Erie listened with rapt attention at a rally last weekend as Trump spoke about returning to the site of the shooting, which he said had steadily become “a major tourist spot” since July 13.

“We're going back. This is a big deal. “A lot of people are coming,” Trump said. “I think I'll start the speech by saying, 'Like I said.'”

The image of Trump, his bloodied face raising his fist in the air, is celebrated on T-shirts, flags and other merchandise for sale at his rallies. It has also become an enduring metaphor for the devotion shown to him by his loyal followers.

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

Saturday's event at Butler Farm Show Inc. is expected to be “different” than a typical Trump rally, a senior Trump campaign adviser told CNN. Instead, Trump wants to use his speech as a kind of remembrance of the victims that day.

The former president wants to honor the memory of Corey Comperatore, a firefighter who died protecting his family from bullets. The comperatore's wife, daughters and sisters will be present on Saturday. Trump also plans to acknowledge the two other victims injured in the attack, David Dutch and James Copenhaver, and thank his personal Secret Service official for surrounding him on stage.

However, Trump's speeches were touted as departures in tone and content from his previous typical statements – only to see Trump return to familiar themes and attack political rivals, as he did on the closing night of the Republican National Convention.

In a clear sign of the importance Trump's campaign attaches to the event, his running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance, will be in attendance – as will Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk and singer Lee Greenwood.

Before the first assassination attempt, both Trump's campaign and his team had suggested that the former president would receive the same security and resources as a sitting president at various events, but this was rejected, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

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

Secret Service officials say the errors were fixed on July 13, when radio calls that a man was on the roof of a nearby building never reached the agents protecting Trump and when the agency did not say who was responsible Building security was in charge of the rally on Saturday.

A federal official familiar with the planning told CNN that unlike the day Trump was shot, the Secret Service and local law enforcement agencies will be in a unified command center to quickly communicate threats or problems with each other.

Other improvements that were supposed to have been introduced on the day Thomas Matthew Crooks almost assassinated the former president will also come into effect on Saturday, the source told CNN, including a counter-drone system that was not deployed until almost an hour after the flight a drone through Crooks online was rally grounds.

According to a Senate report, the operator had difficulty getting the system to work that day and admitted he had completed 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 post would be heavily secured Saturday.

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

“You will see many more improvements,” the official said.

Trump will be surrounded by ballistic glass when he takes the stage, an additional measure introduced at his campaign rallies shortly after the shooting this summer.

The Pennsylvania State Police will also take a more active role in security this time and more local law enforcement will be on site to secure the area.

While local officials already complained about a lack of meetings and instructions from the Secret Service during the July rally, the agency is expected to provide much more direct and explicit instructions about 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,” Anthony Guglielmi, the agency’s communications chief, said in a statement Friday.

Leading up to the Butler rally, the campaign conducted extensive discussions and made 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 final stages of the race, Trump and Harris are focusing primarily 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 airs during the first week of October. According to AdImpact data, Democrats have more than $60 million in ad bookings between Oct. 1 and Oct. 7, while Republicans have about $41 million reserved.

The bulk of that spending will be in Pennsylvania, where Democrats will spend $11.1 million and Republicans will spend $12.5 million. The parties have posted more than $115 million, almost evenly split, on the Keystone State's airwaves by the end of the race.

The campaigns are trying to win over a segment of persuasive Americans while working feverishly to ensure that their supporters actually show up to vote.

But the fight for the White House is also being played on very local terrain, with close attention paid to swing counties within swing states that could tip the balance in a razor-thin race. Harris criticizes Trump over health care in Wisconsin, while Trump criticizes Harris over taxes in Georgia.

Republican and Democratic strategists tell CNN they don't believe the battleground map will expand or shrink in the final 30 days leading up to Election Day.

There are currently no more presidential debates scheduled, meaning there are no opportunities for either candidate to have moments that fundamentally change the course of the presidential campaign — and bring more targeted appeals into focus.

According to a new Marquette Law poll, Harris has a lead among independent voters in Wisconsin, 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 accelerating that progress, aides said.

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

A focus of Harris' campaign is targeting Latino voters in Pennsylvania to prevent Trump from denting Democrats' traditionally large margin of victory among non-white voters. These efforts have been demonstrated at events such as Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz's event in Bethlehem last month for vice presidential candidate. He pledged to continue supporting Puerto Rico's efforts to rebuild after Hurricane Maria – an appeal aimed at Latino voters in Pennsylvania, who are largely of Puerto Rican descent.

The Harris campaign is also likely to get a boost from former President Barack Obama, who will launch a four-week campaign starting Thursday in Pittsburgh to bolster Harris' candidacy.

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