It was one of those unforgettable moments where you remember where you were when you heard the news.

For me, it was a sunny late afternoon and I was in our local library’s parking lot while my son dashed in. I was waiting when the alert flashed over my phone – “Donald Trump shot at Pennsylvania rally.” As I drove us home, we listened to the radio, trying to figure out what had just happened, even though all the reports coming in emphasized that President Trump was alive. In that moment, even though the entire moment was captured live on TV and we could all see the blood, we had no real idea just how near of a miss it was.

It has been a full year since Trump was shot in Butler. In retrospect, we can all point to the June debate as the moment that Joe Biden lost the presidency. And we can also all point to this rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, as the moment that Donald Trump won his second term. Now, the race did get upended by Biden dropping out and Kamala Harris stepping in, but the imagery of Butler was an ever-present part of the campaign from that point on – despite the attempts by the press to downplay what had happened.

Real newspaper from July 13th, 2024 pic.twitter.com/RPOMyPE292

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) July 12, 2025

People close to Trump have commented that Butler changed him, something that has been noted in articles, interviews, and books. Trump’s campaign co-chair, and now chief of staff, Susie Wiles, recounted to Miranda Devine on her new podcast that she thought that Trump was dead when the shots rang out.

“We were just crazy the minute he was hit,” Wiles said, as she admitted she thought Trump had been killed by the gunfire.

Speaking with Miranda Devine Wednesday on “Pod Force One,” Wiles suggested divine intervention saved Trump’s life, noting the placement of the immigration chart he had up on the big LED screen at his rally caused him to turn his head in a different direction, just as the shots were fired.

“So to have him ask for that chart, eight minutes in, and to have it come on the side that was opposite, caused him to look in a different direction and lift his head just a little because it was higher, and that just doesn’t happen because it happened,” she said.

Trump grabbed his ear as it was struck and quickly went down as Secret Service agents rushed the stage. He stood up with blood streaming down the side of his face and yelled, “Fight!” at roaring supporters as he was taken to safety, in one of the most memorable images in American political history.

“You think the worst. You cannot, it’s human, you can’t think otherwise. And when he stood up, I thought, ‘Oh my gosh,’” Wiles told Devine.

Wiles, who was the successful campaign’s co-chair, said it was clear soon after they arrived at the hospital that Trump was going to be okay.

“But it was a scary time, and it changed everything for us, the security became front and center, which it hadn’t been before,” she said. “Not to take away from the Secret Service, it’s just that they they became on steroids then. And we couldn’t do outdoor rallies, which became sort of the hallmark for the campaign. We couldn’t go to buildings that had lots of windows.”

She said Trump’s team adapted and believed Trump thinks he was “saved.”

Trump himself has said that God spared him. He spoke with his daughter-in-law Lara Trump about Butler on her Fox News show recently.

“It was unforgettable,” Trump said during an exclusive interview clip that aired Thursday on “My View with Lara Trump.” “I didn’t know exactly what was going on. I got a whack.

“People were screaming, and I got down quickly, fortunately, because I think they shot eight bullets.”

And Trump asserts that, despite everything, he has confidence in the Secret Service.

.@POTUS on the Secret Service after last year's assassination attempt against him in Butler: "Mistakes were made … I have great confidence in these people. I know the people and they're very talented, very capable. They had a bad day, and I think they'll admit that." pic.twitter.com/uK4C9eJKFq

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) July 13, 2025

He might be the only person who does have confidence in them at this point, as the Secret Service has fired no one for what happened at Butler, and with intelligence reports out that there were threats against Donald Trump that the Secret Service knew about, the Senate, at least, is demanding greater accountability.

“Prior to the July 13 rally, senior-level Secret Service officials became aware of a threat to then-former President Trump,” read the Government Accountability Office (GAO) report requested by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. “This information was not specific to the July 13 rally or gunman. Nonetheless, due to the Secret Service’s siloed practice for sharing classified threat information, Secret Service and local law enforcement personnel central to developing site security plans for the rally were unaware of the threat.”

The report, released on Saturday, confirmed that the Secret Service “had no process to share classified threat information with partners when the information was not considered an imminent threat to life.”

And there should be real accountability, because a man died that day in Butler. It just wasn’t Donald Trump.

I think no one is more cognizant of the fact that Corey Comperatore died in the hail of bullets meant for Donald Trump than Donald Trump himself. No one gets that close to death without being unaffected. What happened in Butler changed the president on a fundamental level, and it should serve as a sobering reminder for all of us as well. Things could have been tragically, horrifically, different that day.

One year ago in Butler, PA, it was a stark reminder of the awfulness of political violence that plagued our country—and still does.

I’m incredibly thankful the president wasn’t assassinated and I cannot imagine the collective national trauma.

We must condemn political violence… pic.twitter.com/gazHY7AKUX

— U.S. Senator John Fetterman (@SenFettermanPA) July 13, 2025

In this current moment when too many find violence an acceptable response to politics, we should all remember what happened a year ago today, and as Senator Fetterman said, “turn down the temperature.”

Featured image: original Victory Girls art by Darleen Click