Butler could be the big one.
Expected crowd estimates at the Trump rally on Saturday are all over the map, ranging from a low of 15,000 to as high as 100,000. The Secret Service is expecting as many as 60,000 people; Trump supporters and some independent observers say 100,000 is possible.
Trump himself is rather famously obsessed with crowd sizes — as are some journalists with deflating his exaggerated estimates — but by any measure, the crowd expected to arrive in Butler this Saturday for Trump’s return to the site where he was grazed by a would-be assassin’s bullet is likely to be large.
It’s a pilgrimage.
“There is a pilgrimage sense at all the rallies, but this is going to be THE ONE,” said Jen Golbeck, a University of Maryland professor who has been attending Trump rallies regularly and who has been monitoring pro-Trump forums on the internet.
“There are definitely people who feel like — and say to me — the hand of God has touched Trump,” she said.
There has long been a faction of Trump supporters, primarily evangelical Christians, who view him through a Biblical lens, as a “King Cyrus” figure whom God has chosen to deliver America from its problems, as Cyrus the Great delivered the Jews from their “Babylonian captivity” in the Old Testament book of Isaiah. The idea has been around since Trump first ran for office in 2016 — popularized in part by right-wing Christian broadcaster Lance Wallnau, who hosted JD Vance in Monroeville last week.
After the assassination attempt in Butler, the religious interpretation of Trump’s candidacy expanded well beyond the evangelicals, helped along by Trump himself, his campaign surrogates and other Republican officials.
“We’re not overly religious, but I do feel God had a hand in saving him — it was just too close,” said Shannon Sparrow, 55, of Cranesville, Erie County, last Sunday as she and her 17-year-old daughter Victoria Hudson waited in line outside the Trump rally in Erie.
The notion of divine intervention at the Butler Farm Show grounds quickly took hold among witnesses, Trump’s allies in Washington and supporters nationwide, and it was featured front-and-center just days later at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wis.
Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., a former Trump opponent who in 2016 accused “many people on the right” of falling into a “trap” of supporting Trump, posted on X after the shooting that “God protected President Trump.”
Rep. Mike Kelly, a Butler Republican and eyewitness who co-chairs the House task force investigating the shooting, posted on Facebook on July 15, the first day of the convention, a photo of the flag flying before Trump spoke at the rally.
“If you take a closer look, you’ll see that it’s not the effort of man, this is the effort of nature,” Mr. Kelly wrote. “The full American flag was twisted by the wind into this angelic shape with stars on one wing and stripes on the other. A truly divine creation.”
At the convention, Trump himself amplified the divine intervention narrative.
“I had God on my side,” Trump said of the “providential” moment. “I really felt that.”
After paying tribute to former firefighter Corey Comperatore, who was killed in the shooting, Trump told the crowd he was only standing in the arena “by the grace of almighty God,” and that a doctor in Pennsylvania told him “he never saw anything like this. He called it a miracle.”
When Trump added that he was “not supposed to be here tonight,” supporters responded by chanting “Yes you are.”
The Trump campaign isn’t the first — and is unlikely to be the last — to capitalize on supporters’ faith to try to win an election. It may be the first — at least in the modern era — to do it quite so explicitly.
The assassination attempt — and the sense among many that Trump’s survival was something more than just luck — had an immediate impact on the crowds at his rallies, according to the people who know them best: the people who sell Trump-themed merchandise outside.
Matt Luna, a North Carolinian who is part of a crew that travels the country selling Trump merchandise, was outside the Butler rally in July; he will be there again this Saturday. He was also outside the Republican Convention and in Grand Rapids, Mich., Trump’s first rally after Butler.
He said he’s seen the rallies grow bigger, drawing “a lot more people — more than any venue can hold.”
The attempted assassination has also dominated the merchandise sales.
Associated Press photographer Evan Vucci’s viral photo of Trump holding his fist high and the American flag behind him as the Secret Service tried to rush him off the stage is everywhere.
It’s on T-shirts. It’s on hats. It’s on everything from flags to refrigerator magnets.
Multiple vendors agreed: Demand immediately shifted to and stayed on items featuring or making reference to the attempted assassination.
The T-shirt slogans range from “Fight! Fight! Fight!” to “Still Standing” to “Never Surrender.” They are sold next to shirts that read “God, Guns & Trump” and “Jesus is my Savior; Trump is my President.”
Kira DiDomenico, 44, of Jamestown, N.Y., sported a variation last Sunday in Erie: Trump in sunglasses, both middle fingers raised, and the slogan “You missed.”
“They can’t stop him, basically,” said Ms. DiDomenico who was at the rally with her best friend Stacy Rupczyk, 44, also of Jamestown.
Both were attending a Trump rally for the first time.
“He got up with that fist, fighting,” said Ms. DiDomenico.
“He’s not backing down,” added Ms. Rupczyk. “He’s going to do what it takes. … I got goosebumps right now.”
Both of them yelled, “Go Trump!”
Ms. Sparrow and her 17-year-old daughter Victoria drew inspiration of sorts from the attempted assassination.
Victoria was wearing a T-shirt with the iconic photo of the bloodied Trump raising his fist, with the slogan “Never Surrender.”
“For him to stand up and do that just after he’d been shot? That’s who I’m voting for,” said Ms. Sparrow, who said she registered for the first time ever this year to vote for Trump.
“I said no — he’s getting in.”
Ms. Golbeck, the university professor who has been monitoring the pro-Trump posts on internet chat boards, said the Butler shooting also plugged in to a long-held desire within that narrower community of Trump supporters to cast the former president as heroic and powerful.
“It’s such a big thing for them, and they’re looking for ways to cast Trump into that mode. He’s not a military guy; he’s not a physical guy,” she said. “The shooting was finally this opportunity to say he did a physically dangerous thing.”
Ms. Golbeck noted the shooting has also led to conspiratorial theories that there are larger darker forces behind the attempt.
“In psychology, there’s the concept of proportionality,” she noted, “that’s what’s driving the conspiracy stuff: a sense the planning has to be proportional to the outcome. It’s such a big thing, it can’t be just one crazy guy — it has to be some larger conspiracy.”
Ms. Golbeck also said she has seen two changes within the Trump movement since Butler.
At first, when it was clear Trump was going to be OK, she said, “they went into this really gleeful moment. You saw it at the RNC. … They were thrilled, saying it was finally ordained he was going to win.”
But then Biden dropped out, and things weren’t going as well, and there’s been “this slide downward,” she said, “a little bit less enthusiastic, a lot of worry that wasn’t there before. They want it to be back in the news.”
And now, she said, his fans are thrilled that “Trump is returning to where ‘they’ tried to kill him.”
Jeff Roydes, 43, of Titusville, said he’s going to be in Butler this Saturday.
Wearing a raised-fist T-shirt, Mr. Roydes said he would have been in Butler in July, “but I didn’t know he was there that day until it was too late.”
Mr. Roydes said the shooting altered his view of Trump somewhat. “I already knew he was a resilient person,” he said, “but he showed a little more courage than I thought he had, definitely … definitely a lot more courage than I thought he had.
“That’s what we need. We need a fighter,” he added. “I just know people need to support him more now than ever.”
Mr. Roydes is not alone.
Eyewitness and RNC delegate Mike McMullen told the Post-Gazette after the shooting that he didn’t believe it was “about Democrat or Republican, left or right,” but rather “evil.” Mr. McMullen last week said Trump’s return to Butler would be a “huge factor” and mark a definitive statement that “evil will never prevail.”
Regardless how many “pilgrims” make the journey Saturday, Ms. Golbeck said, “It’s going to be wild.”