Donald Trump supporters who witnessed the shooting feel connected to him

MILWAUKEE — A Week After Jondavid Longo jumped on his wife as gunfire rang out in the balmy July air at a rally for former President Donald Trump. He stood at the Fiserv Forum and watched Trump accept his party’s nomination.

Longo, who had just found out his wife was pregnant, he said that as he lay on the ground he kept thinking about the fact that he had to protect two lives. Thinking about fatherhood, he said the moment made him even more determined to lend a hand Trump win the presidency in November.

“We heard the same gunfire, we saw it fall,” Longo said from the convention floor. “…Everyone in the world now sees the strength and the steadfastness of President Trump. His defiant raising of his fist after he was almost killed by a bullet was a message to everyone in the world, to people who were undecided, that he is the man and he is the man who is fit for this job at this moment.”

Trump delivered the most anticipated speech of his reelection campaign on Thursday, standing next to the firefighter helmet and uniform of Corey Comperatore, who was killed in a shooting at his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13. The 93-minute speech, the longest in convention history, was full of falsehoods and appeals to the far-right MAGA base that had cheered him on. But it began with an uncharacteristically personal account of the attempted assassination.

“I shouldn’t be here tonight. I shouldn’t be here,” Trump said as the crowd chanted, “Yes, you are.” Trump continued: “I stand before you in this arena only by the grace of almighty God.”

The shooting made it harder for Democrats to directly attack Trump, whose radical policies and violent rhetoric have been a hallmark of his political brand since his first campaign in 2016. But by the end of the convention — and Trump’s speech — Democrats pounced on GOP calls for mass deportations and pointed to several moments throughout the week when the GOP seemed to undermine its own calls for unity with dismissiveness and intimidation.

However, Trump supporters who attended Butler’s rally, some of whom were delegates sitting at the front of the room, scene at the convention last The shooting that week not only left an indelible mark on history and the presidential election. It also undermined their sense of security at the rallies they attended and elevated a man who had already become more than a political hero.

“I think I’m still processing it, being there and now being here,” said John Grenci, an alternate delegate from Butler. “It’s part of the story.”

Trump remains wildly unpopular with most voters in most polls, but his admiration among his It is secure to say that the number of her ardent supporters is unmatched in the history of up-to-date politics.

“I believe God saved Trump from a bullet that day,” said Michael McMullen, a delegate from Pittsburgh who attended the convention wearing a different hometown jersey each day. “With this fist, he said, we are ready to fight, we are seasoned, and we will win.”

Eerie silence

The Trump fans sitting in the stands behind the podium during the 90 seconds that the world saw are now history.

Vince Fusca is one of them. He stood out in a fedora and a gray Trump T-shirt, his face framed by a shock of black hair. As the Secret Service descended on Trump, Fusca remained on his feet while those around him ducked.

“I was absolutely stunned, terrified. I felt helpless,” said Fusca, who traveled to Milwaukee the day after the rally to attend the convention.

Fusca, a longtime Trump superfan, has attended at least 10 Trump rallies. He has also built something of an alt-right cult, attracting wild theories — which he has ridiculed — among so-called Q-Anon conspiracy theorists that may actually be the delayed John F. Kennedy Jr., son of the 35th US president, in disguise. Kennedy died in a plane crash in 1999.

As Fusca searched floor to ceiling for Trump merchandise in his white van in a Waukesha, Wis., parking lot this week, he said the moment “changed everything and nothing.” He will never forget the fear of Trump being dead, but he is unsure how it will affect voters in November.

“July 13 is still a long way off,” he said. “When people go to the polls, will it be on their minds? I don’t know. It will be on mine.”

Sarah Phillips doesn’t make many public appearances, but last week she gave two speeches she’ll never forget: she opened a rally in Butler and spoke on the third night of the Republican National Convention.

“I honestly thought they were firecrackers until I looked at the president’s face and saw the fear in his eyes,” Phillips, a petroleum engineer and energy industry advocate from Cannonsburg, Pennsylvania, said, recalling the shooting.

Phillips, 37, still marvels at how composed and kind people were that day. No one ran away. No one was trampled. People stayed with the victims until medics arrived.

Trump also praised the crowd in his speech.

“This beautiful crowd didn’t want to leave me,” Trump said at the RNC. “They knew I was in trouble. They didn’t want to leave me. And you can see the love written all over their faces.”

Phillips had largely supported Trump because of his pro-energy stance, she said, but that moment connected her even more to him. “When you hear him say into the microphone, ‘Wait, wait, wait,’ he was risking his life to speak to his people.”

There is a political struggle ahead of us

For Republican Senate candidate David McCormick and congressmen who attended the rally became part of their speeches at rallies last week and will likely continue to be part of the Republican Party political narrative.

“You saw his instincts when he went down,” said U.S. Rep. Dan Meuser (R., Pa.). “He’s a very, very tough guy. He wanted everybody to know he was OK, and by doing that, he made everybody else feel OK.”

Moments before the shooting last weekend, Trump wanted to invite McCormick on stage, but then changed his mind and started talking about the border.

McCormick called Trump the day after the shooting. He said Trump mentioned how close he was to being on stage with him at that moment.

“I thought he was going to say, ‘You could have gotten shot,’” McCormick told a Pennsylvania delegation in Milwaukee on Thursday. “And he says, ‘You would have been on prime time.’”

Trump knows how to create a TV moment, and his convention was hysterical. People in the audience began wearing bandages over their ears to imitate Trump. The former president said a bullet “pierced” his ear. His campaign has No information was released about his injuries or treatment.

For Butler residents, the site of an agricultural show where 4-H children showed off their animals will forever be the site of the attempted assassination. U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly grew up in the area and played baseball there.

“When everyone started chanting ‘USA!’ it just made you feel proud and thought about what’s really important,” Kelly said. “We’re so energized right now. I don’t think I’ve ever seen more energy in the country than we do right now.”