A supporter at Trump's campaign rally in Butler, PA, on Oct. 5Jen Golbeck/AP
Donald Trump has faced two assassination attempts in the past three months—horrifying events that he has used to spread unfounded conspiracy theories and smear Democratic leaders with false blame. He has been aided in this effort by vice presidential candidate JD Vance, his sons Eric Trump and Don Jr., multiple Republican members of Congress, and backers of Project 2025. Their coordinated messaging—that Democrats supposedly “tried to kill” Trump—has been featured at the Republican National Convention, at Trump’s campaign rallies, and in numerous media appearances, from Fox News to Dr. Phil’s show.
Trump and his surrogates took the effort to the next level when the former president held a large rally on Saturday at the same site in Butler, Pennsylvania, where he was wounded by a would-be assassin during a July 13 appearance. The Trump campaign billed the heavily produced event—which included a live opera singer and an awkward performance by Elon Musk—as a return to “the very same ground where he took a bullet for democracy.”
“They tried to kill him,” Eric Trump said, “and it’s because the Democratic Party, they can’t do anything right.”
Speaking ahead of the former president, Eric Trump highlighted the familiar theme: “They’ve tried to get my father every single second since he went down that golden escalator,” he declared from the podium, standing alongside his wife Lara Trump, currently co-chair of the Republican National Committee. “They tried to smear us, they tried to bankrupt us, they came after us, they impeached him twice, they went after his Supreme Court justices, they weaponized the entire legal system…and it has not worked.”
As the audience cheered, he emphasized: “And then guys, they tried to kill him. They tried to kill him, and it’s because the Democratic Party, they can’t do anything right.”
Eric Trump has sought to directly blame Democrats ever since the attack in Butler, including in multiple appearances on Fox News. Trump himself repeated the theme from the podium on Saturday: “Over the past eight years, those who want to stop us from achieving this future have slandered me, impeached me, indicted me, tried to throw me off the ballot, and who knows: maybe even tried to kill me.”
This was a planned element of the former president’s speech; he read the lines from a teleprompter.
Amid multiple investigations by the FBI, Homeland Security, and Congress, no evidence has emerged that either of Trump’s would-be assassins had any connections to Democratic leaders. Neither perpetrator appears to have been driven fundamentally by partisan politics—a common, if somewhat counterintuitive pattern among political assassins, as I documented in previous reporting and in my book, Trigger Points.
The motive of the man charged with targeting Trump in Florida remains unclear; his background indicates that he voted for Trump in 2016 but later turned against him and grew sharply critical of his foreign policy. The FBI has said that the motive of the deceased 20-year-old who shot Trump and others in Butler, who was a registered Republican voter, remains unknown.
Notably, Vance used a slightly modified approach at the Butler rally, four days after conspicuously working to soften his political rhetoric and image during the vice presidential debate with Democratic Gov. Tim Walz.
“Just look at everything they’ve done to President Trump,” Vance said on Saturday. “First, they tried to silence him. When that didn’t work, they tried to bankrupt him. When that didn’t work, they tried to jail him. And with all the hatred they have spewed at President Trump, it was only a matter of time before somebody tried to kill him.”
Vance then reiterated that the assassination attempts had resulted from Democrats calling Trump “a threat to democracy.” No evidence supporting that claim has emerged in either investigation.
Vance has led the way with this blame, starting in the immediate hours after the Butler shooting, and in subsequent campaign speeches, as I highlighted in my previous reporting. This time, he subtly shifted that blame to “somebody” while keeping the the litany of accusations essentially the same.
Other top GOP leaders continue to play along with this false messaging, which threat assessment and national security experts have told me is fueling potential retaliatory violence. On Sunday, ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos confronted House Speaker Mike Johnson in an interview about the rhetoric from the Butler rally, after Johnson called out Democratic campaign messaging as overheated.
“Eric Trump actually did specifically reference Democrats,” Stephanopoulos said. “He said, ‘They tried to kill him. And it’s because the Democratic Party, they can’t do anything right.’ Do you support those comments or not?”
“I don’t know what Eric was saying because I only heard just a snippet there,” Johnson replied. “I don’t know the context.”
