The two assassination attempts on President Donald Trump forever changed the direction of his second term, shifting him from a “man on a mission” in the first term to his current urgent approach that today could be his last, according to a new first-person account of the Butler, Pennsylvania, shooting.
In Butler: The Untold Story of the Near Assassination of Donald Trump and the Fight for America’s Heartland, Washington Examiner columnist Salena Zito revealed that Trump not only feels that the “hand of God” saved him but that he believes “a higher power” has anointed him to “get s*** done.”
Zito told me: “It’s very different than 2016. He didn’t have the urgency of now. I think being shot at and knowing that people are always coming for you, whether it’s lawfare or politics or two different people trying to kill you and an Iranian government that wants to take you down, he understands between now and dead, he wants to get s*** done.”
Since 2016, when she was among the first to see that Trump was catching fire in Pennsylvania, Zito has become something of a Trump whisperer, a reporter whom Trump trusts and even provided his personal cellphone number to.
Consider: Not only did he talk to her before the Butler shooting at a July 13, 2024, rally, but he called her eight times the day after the shooting, the first to apologize for not making a promised interview after the rally where Zito and her family had a front section view.
“Good morning, Salena! It’s Donald Trump,” she wrote of his July 14 call. “I wanted to apologize that we weren’t able to do the interview.”
In that call, he agonized over the death of firefighter Corey Comperatore and talked about how he felt God protected him that day from a headshot by shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks, and generally in life.
“He thinks the hand of God has been there many times, but he was sure he never thought about it when it happened. ‘I got impeached twice, the endless court cases, so when I think about it, while none of that compares to what happened yesterday, I cannot dismiss that God has been with me. This time, though, it was a big one,” he told her.
Zito’s book, set for release July 8 and already being made into a movie, is more than just a riveting eyewitness account of the bloody Butler shooting but also a sharp takedown of the anti-Trump media that has never given the president a fair shot and was recently caught lying to buck up former President Joe Biden.
“They were cheering him. But the mask has been pulled off of our profession. And it’s never going to be the same in terms of how much people trusted us. They saw with what happened with Biden just how much things were covered up and how distrustful our profession has become,” she told me.
Zito’s specialty is covering Pennsylvania and how it is a microcosm of many states and cultures. It is a form of journalism ignored by most legacy media, especially by the pack of reporters covering Washington politics.
As an example, she wrote in her book about traveling in Erie, Pennsylvania, with the reporters covering then-vice presidential pick Sen. JD Vance (R-OH). She offered some analysis on why the area Vance was visiting was so important to the 2024 election. None cared.
“After a while, I gave up trying to tell the reporters about this place. They didn’t seem to notice that along the three-mile stretch the motorcade took to Gordon’s [Butcher Shop], the streets in the neighborhoods and along U.S. 19 were lined with Trump-Vance supporters. Some had stopped their cars to wave and get a glimpse of the veep candidate. Others had stepped out of their businesses or homes, and they were all waving. Several had Trump-Vance signs or American flags in their yards. One guy had a cheeky sign that read, ‘We Love Weird People.’ I did not see a single reporter look up from their phone,” she wrote.
That’s because, she said, the Washington-based elite journalists think they know better than flyover America.
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“There are no consequences for how they cover Normalville, Pennsylvania, because they will never encounter someone from Normalville,” she wrote, adding:
“Many national news organizations assumed that most Americans believed what they believed, and so the 2024 election would therefore be decided by their worldview. What they missed is that the country has moved center-Right, with independent voters, and many people have lost trust in their structure of news delivery. They also missed that big cities like Los Angeles, New York, and D.C. don’t decide who wins election cycles, but people in places like Butler, Pennsylvania, sure do.”