This article was originally published by UnHerd.
Donald Trump raising his fist, spitting out the words “Fight! Fight! Fight!” as blood streams down his face from a bullet wound in his ear—it is the sort of image that used to be called iconic back before that word degenerated into a synonym for famous. The attempted assassination of Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, a year ago this weekend was the great symbolic moment of his 2024 presidential victory. There are certain events so transformative that we mark their anniversaries as a way of measuring the change they’ve wrought on us. The near-assassination of Trump is one of these.
We know that the 20-year-old sniper Thomas Crooks, a zitty and cerebral loner from the suburbs of Pittsburgh, brought an AR-15–style semiautomatic rifle to the roof of a warehouse 180 yards away and fired eight shots at Trump, hitting three bystanders and killing 50-year-old fireman Corey Comperatore. But there is still no consensus about the larger meaning of what happened at Butler.
