'Divine Intervention' And 'Good Versus Evil': Trump Returns To Site Of Assassination Attempt

The former president's return to the site of the first attempt on his life had spiritual — and, of course, political — undertones.

BUTLER, Pa. — To hear it from attendees, speakers, vice presidential nominee JD Vance, the former president’s middle son, and even Donald Trump himself — it was nothing short of a miracle that Trump survived the attempt on his life at this very spot 84 days ago.

“I believe there was divine intervention that he didn’t end up dead after he got shot,” said Abigail Jones, a 43-year-old Trump supporter from Pittsburgh, one of the thousands who trekked to see Trump return to western Pennsylvania on Saturday. “And so if God saved his life that day, there must be a reason for it, because God uses people.”

Lara Trump, the former president’s daughter-in-law and his handpicked chairman of the Republican National Committee, told the audience at the Butler Farm Show fairgrounds that God spared the former president’s life “not once, but twice,” alluding to the armed man arrested last month outside Trump’s Palm Beach golf club.

But Lara Trump took that idea to its darkest extreme when she framed the 2024 election as “no longer a fight between Republicans versus Democrats, left versus right. It’s good versus evil.”

Trump’s return to Butler, where a gunman grazed his ear with a bullet on July 13, was, throughout much of it, a chaotic split screen. The speakers mostly lauded Trump’s resilience, praised the physical and religious forces that protected him, and paid tribute, with a moment of silence and a live performance from a noted opera tenor, to the man killed that day, Corey Comperatore.