"As I Was Saying"

How Trump’s got his groove back in Butler

Trump has finally hit his stride in this election season. His rally on Saturday looked much like the rallies he had back in 2020, the five a day he did in hopes of making a last-minute plea to save his second term.

Anyone watching Trump’s rally in Butler would assume he was the clear frontrunner to win the election one month from today. No one can draw crowds like that. The Democrats keep trying to spin it, to pretend people leave because they’re exhausted or bored, but nothing could be further from the truth.

Trump flew his plane over the crowd, as he often does, because if the man knows how to do anything it’s how to put on a good show. No one in politics has ever blended politics and entertainment like Trump has. Whether that’s good or bad is subjective. But there is no question, at least to me, that Trump fills a void that Hollywood left empty. He provides so much in the way of high drama, unpredictability, humor, and, on Saturday, a deeply moving memorial for a life lost.

The massive crowd from the view of the plane:

The Butler rally was meant to be a memorial but it was also a show of courage and bravery to a traumatized nation that needed to see Trump was okay. Trump was more than okay.

Trump began the rally with a joke. He took his place and turned to the same immigration chart he was looking at the moment he was shot and delivered the best line of the night, “As I was saying…”

The mood was high even though much of the rally was to pay respects to the fallen firefighter, Corey Comperatore, who has never been forgotten by Trump.

At 6:11pm, the moment shots rang out 12 weeks ago, Trump held a moment of silence.

Painter Scott Lobaido unveiled his portrait of Comperatore as Ave Maria played in the background:

Unless you’ve watched a Trump rally from start to finish, you’ll never get the Trump thing. If you only get bits and pieces plucked from a long speech, stripped of context, devoid of humor or sarcasm, all it will do is confound you. It doesn’t make sense when you chop it up and look at the pieces separately.

But when you watch his rallies all the way through, as I’ve done going on five years by now, his gift for storytelling is impossible to miss. Trump has been telling stories his entire life, going all the way back to high school. He is telling an ongoing story to his supporters about the America they’ve lost and the America they should fight to bring back.

To the Left, that amounts to “we won’t go back” to the “white male patriarchy.” But that’s not why this story resonates so deeply. It’s that half of this country has been left behind, and they can feel it. But this rally, this moment in the race, isn’t about the past, not with JD Vance and Elon Musk flanking Trump: it’s about the future. A future, should America turn out in enough numbers to hand Trump the win, a second term after all.

It’s true that rallies don’t necessarily translate to votes. Hillary Clinton held highly attended, enthusiastic rallies with Bruce Springsteen and Katy Perry performing. The Trump story is bigger. This is David vs. Goliath. It’s the Hero’s Journey. It’s deeper in our collective psyches than just an election.

This wasn’t an ordinary Trump rally. Elon Musk was there, which meant over 13 million people would be watching the rally on X and various other platforms. Nothing like that ever happened in 2020 and hasn’t happened since this Trump campaign began.

With so many people watching, Trump might have caused a headache for himself if he’d said something that could be used against him. But strangely enough, Trump gave a focused, measured, disciplined speech. That meant the only thing the hive mind on Twitter could do was post mocking images of Trump and Elon Musk.

JD Vance also appeared at the rally and gave yet another strong speech.

It does feel like a vibe shift has taken place over this past week, as the Harris campaign seems to lose momentum while the Trump campaign begins to build. But most of us are still holding our breath.

We’re just a month away from knowing whether this will be the series finale of the Trump show or if we’ll get one more season. I started out hating every minute of it, but ten years later, I never want it to end.

What Trump has done to turn his story around and preserve his legacy means he walks away a hero no matter what.