James Fletcher was filming the Trump rally when the shots rang out a year ago
The plan was to film some spectators arriving for the Trump rally. Hear their reasons for believing that Donald Trump is the answer to their struggles and concerns. Maybe listen to a few opening remarks from the Republican candidate and hit the road.
It’s almost impossible to find a Trump rally visitor not wearing Trump-branded fund-rasising merchandise. T-shirts, hats, socks, shoes, umbrellas. Often with slogans as outrageous as they’re witty.
They’re a genial mob. Polite, warm-natured, unworldly for the most part.
“You’ve come all the way from London to little old Butler?” Big smiles and mild fascination that an outsider would want to know more about their hero. Zero animosity and an immediate sense that they’re good people, seeking answers to their worries.
Cost of living gets a frequent mention. One man, a petrol station-owner, tells me he watches customers scrape coins together to raise $2 to drive to work. All bills are higher and increasing: fuel, food, energy and, of course, taxes. Biden’s age gets a mention here and there. Trump’s not at all.
A mile-long queue keeps nudging forward to the security line, where the Secret Service diligently operate an airport-style security check with metal detectors, hand-searching of bags, patdowns etc. A small pile of confiscated pocket knives is testament to the thoroughness of the process. You enter the field to see even more agents dotted around in uniform, suits and plain clothes. All armed and wearing an earpiece. Snipers are clearly visible on every high rooftop. They’re backed up by local police in large numbers.
The pre-show is an eclectic mix of videos – Louis Armstrong sings ‘It’s a wonderful world’, Celine Dion ‘My heart will go on’, with occasional country music. The Village People sing the gay anthem ‘YMCA’. Then there’s some heavy metal with profane - and I mean profane - lyrics.
As often with Trump, he aims to please a lot of people at once and this playlist is musical evidence. They use the old trick of raising the volume gradually as each song passes. Then, spontaneously, thousands of phone-wielding arms shoot up as the motorcade is spotted. Forty or so motorcycles in formation. Black SUVs as far as the eye can see. They disappear behind the stage.
And, after a brief delay, strains of ‘I’m proud to be an American’ fill their air, which they all know means one thing: Trump on stage. On he walks, in his blue suit and open-necked shirt. Possibly not as dynamically as in 2016.
Straight to the microphone and into his old classics about the fake news and how they won’t show the scale of the crowd. He tells us Joe Biden is ‘a stiff’ and ‘the worst president in the history of the country’. Then onto immigration. He says 20 million have invaded the country from prisons and mental hospitals… and even has a graph on the vast monitors to prove it.
And, five minutes in, that’s when it happens. A few small shots that sound more like metal tapping glass. Among the noise of the crowd, sound system, wind, and disorientation, little is immediately obvious.
Then more shots. From the agents on the roof tops, firing back at the would-be assassin. And now a sense of fear and panic set in. Again, it’s hard to source the origin of the shots. Some people run. Others freeze. Many grab cameras.
These events are designed primarily for television, meaning that many spectators cannot see the stage and instead watch on big monitors dotted around. So nobody knew if Trump was hit or not. Nobody knew which exit was safe, or which way led to danger.
But very quickly one important thing was apparent. It was not a mass shooting. No automatic gunfire. No panic or screaming. But it was clear the event was over. The monitors went blank. The sound system was silent. And people turned to leave. Law enforcement yelled at crowds to evacuate, and people filed out respectfully.
Then various emotions surface from the shock. There were tears. Anger. “Whoever did this deserves the death penalty.”
The mood was sombre and people were stunned. As it turns out, the shooter was outside the security perimeter on a rooftop which should have been sealed off and guarded. The Secret Service is going to face intense scrutiny and rightly so. There is no way someone should ever have been able to access such an obvious, proximate roof, or ever have a clear line to shoot at the stage.
A serving soldier tells me the shot is technically very difficult indeed, owing to the distance, windspeed, shooter’s adrenaline and a target moving as much as Trump does. This is referred to as a ‘stressed’ shooting.
The whole outcome is nothing short of remarkable.
James Fletcher directed The Accidental President (2020) about Donald Trump
