Episode Details

Some say Trump won a second term one year ago today when his head was almost blown off on live television. Maybe that’s true. Maybe it isn’t. Luck was most certainly on his side that bright, beautiful day in Butler, Pennsylvania. I’d been looking forward to the rally because he was returning to a place made almost famous in MAGA lore by Tucker Carlson, who explained Trump’s appeal better than anyone else ever had.

So when Trump was almost assassinated, the first question I had was Why Butler? Even one year later, it seems odd that it happened there, especially since US intelligence already knew Trump’s life was threatened, and outside in Butler, there were many rooftops, and many ways to climb on top of them.

It wasn’t secure, but then again, MAGA rallies seemed like the last place anyone would get away with shooting Trump.

In September, another assassin would give it a shot, a burned-out Gen-X surfer dude who wanted to “save democracy.”

But one year after Butler, it’s as though the tragedy never happened at all. The Left never fully absorbed it and is awash in assassination porn every day, and the Right, well, let’s just say there are many forces at work to break up the grassroots movement otherwise known as MAGA.

Here is a look back at the good, the bad, and the ugly of this past year.

The Good

One year after Butler, Trump’s presidency has been a smashing success when you look at everything he’s accomplished, from the historic bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities to the ceasefire between Israel and Iran, to passing the One Big Beautiful Bill, and several key Supreme Court decisions in his favor. The tariffs seem to have worked out, and the economy is humming.

One year after Butler, the Secret Service has been overhauled. They will continue to reform the agency, they say, to prevent something that catastrophic from happening again.

One year after Butler, Corey Comperatore is remembered as a hero. He protected his family from gunfire. But to those he left behind, they don’t feel like there has been enough closure on the case - how could they have left them unprotected?

But on Saturday, the community came together to honor Corey with a motorcycle ride called Corey’s Cruise:

Corey’s Cruise, that’s the MAGA spirit. Paying tribute to one of their own.

One year after Butler, journalist Selena Zito published the definitive account of that day. A Pennsylvania native, Zito captures Butler and cares enough about the place and its people to tell the story of its history and why it mattered that Trump came to Butler at all. He’s the only sitting president ever to do so, she says.

Zito has seen Trump in a way no other mainstream journalist ever has, and even tops Tucker Carlson, I think, in explaining Trump and his appeal. Maybe because she knows the time and place of which she writes, or maybe it’s something else, an ability to see what other people can’t.

One year after Butler, it has been promises made and promises kept for people like me. I voted for Trump for two reasons. To protest the unprecedented, authoritarian lawfare by Joe Biden and the Democrats and to put an end to the gender madness that was destroying the minds and bodies of children.

It is still hard for me to believe this is going on in America with no guardians on the Left to protect kids. When I see videos like this, I am reminded of why I voted for Trump and why I would vote for him a thousand times over:

One year after Butler, the Trump administration is going after John Brennan and James Comey for Russiagate:

Matt Taibbi has been on the story for years and goes into it at length on America This Week.

The Bad

One year after Butler, Elon Musk, who said he became a Trump supporter that day,