In politics, image can be everything. Maybe it shouldn’t be — maybe that’s very superficial — but image matters. And Donald Trump, no matter what one might think of him, knows about imaging. On Saturday, Donald Trump is returning to Butler, Pennsylvania, to hold another of his trademark rallies — and this time, Elon Musk says he’ll be joining Trump. It’s unclear if Musk will appear on stage with the former president, or whether he will be somewhere in the audience, but either way, it’s an interesting development.
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Elon Musk says he will “be there to support” Donald Trump on Saturday when the former president returns to Butler, Pennsylvania to hold a rally at the site where the first assassination attempt against him unfolded earlier this year.
The Republican presidential nominee is slated to speak on Oct. 5 at the Butler Farm Show fairgrounds in the suburb north of Pittsburgh.
“I will be there to support!” Musk wrote on X late Thursday in response to an image Trump shared promoting the upcoming event.
“Butler on Saturday – historic!” Trump wrote on X alongside an image of him raising his fist that was taken on July 13, moments after he had been shot.
Trump’s return to Butler could be (and probably should be) seen as a defiant response to the July 13th assassination attempt that happened during a rally in that town’s Farm Show Grounds. It’s a neat little bit of political theater, and we shouldn’t necessarily dismiss the value of such gestures; imaging is a big and necessary part of any political campaign. And Elon Musk isn’t the only tech-sector magnate to be, shall we say, disenchanted with today’s Democrats. Even Facebook mogul Mark Zuckerberg described Trump’s bounce-back from the July assassination attempt as “badass.”
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Trump, speaking at a rally in North Carolina on Wednesday, announced this return to Butler.
During a rally last Wednesday in North Carolina, Trump said that he wanted to return to the venue in Butler to “finish our speech.”
“As you know, there have been two assassination attempts on my life that we know of… and the first case in Butler, Pennsylvania, great place, and we’re going back to Butler,” he said. “We’re going to go back and finish our speech.”
Returning to some of that defiant vibe from July 13th wouldn’t be the worst thing Donald Trump could do, what with Pennsylvania being the must-have state that it is for both campaigns. And, if the Tesla/SpaceX mogul is willing, bringing Elon Musk up on the stage would be a good gesture as well.
Appearances matter in these affairs. At the moment, in the RealClearPolitics averages, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are deadlocked in Pennsylvania. The most recent polling seems to have Trump starting to open a narrow lead. In this 2024 presidential contest, Pennsylvania is liable to be the whole deal, and Donald Trump’s triumphant return to the scene of the July 13th attempt on his life, with Elon Musk at his side, might bring in some undecideds — if, indeed, there is anyone in the nation left undecided at this point.
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