EXCLUSIVE – In the final weeks of the 2024 presidential election, then-candidate Donald Trump was doing nonstop rallies, many of them outdoors despite an assassination attempt on his life in Butler, Pennsylvania, that left him bloodied after a bullet struck his ear.
The rallies felt more like festivals than political events, with crowds gathering hours early amid music and pageantry. Local heroes, union leaders, elected officials, and retired military officers cycled through as warmup speakers, firing up the audience between tracks like Oliver Anthony's "Rich Men North of Richmond," Village People's "Y.M.C.A.," and Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the U.S.A.," Trump's walkout anthem.
Despite the press often missing their aspirational quality, Trump deliberately held many rallies in places most politicians never visit – including Butler, where only he and John F. Kennedy have ever campaigned. Years ago, when I asked him why he began doing these events, he shrugged and said, "Sometimes, things just work."
While he was sitting behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, I asked Trump if he missed the rallies he had staged nearly 900 times over the past 10 years. He smiled, then fell quiet for a moment, a look of resignation settling in, before giving a blunt reply.
"The outdoor rallies. I love them, but I probably have to be careful. It's hard. The indoor rallies you can do," he says, reflecting on the final weeks last year, when he kept a grueling pace, often doing several a day.
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"The last four months were perfect. No days off, no nothing. I did either rallies, sometimes they did two rallies in a day. But in the last week, I'd do four or five rallies in a day. We had rallies at 8 o'clock in the morning. At 11 o'clock. At 1 o'clock. It was crazy. The only thing I was worried about was, will I lose my voice," Trump said.
Today, that is not the only thing the people around him worry about.
After surviving two assassination attempts, one of which nearly killed him, and seeing the brutal murder of his friend Charlie Kirk, Trump recognizes that returning to huge outdoor rallies is impossible. Kirk's death, he says, has changed him, shaping not only how he thinks about security but affecting him personally as well.
"It impacted me terribly. Look, he was a great guy. He was for me all the way. All the way. It was so incredible when you heard it. I thought they must be wrong. It couldn't be. And then when you saw the viciousness of it, but I don't want to look at that. I mean, I got the whole picture," he explained. It was clear he is still reeling from how the assassination of Kirk rolled out on social media.
Trump said, like many people, he saw something special in Charlie: "He had a mystique. He had something special over the young people attracted to him."
Trump says Charlie's death is so senseless: "It was just hard to believe. He was a good person. He was not like somebody that's a bad person. He was a hard worker. His wife is very good. Charlie really loved his wife."
Salena Zito is a staff reporter and columnist for the Washington Examiner. She reaches the Everyman and Everywoman through shoe-leather journalism, traveling from Main Street to the beltway and all places in between.
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