Former President Donald Trump and Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), his running mate, attended their first outdoor rally since Trump was shot in the right ear in an assassination attempt in Pennsylvania last month, but there is one major change: bulletproof glass.
Trump’s podium at the North Carolina Aviation Museum & Hall of Fame, where he is slated to deliver remarks on national security on the afternoon of Aug. 21, is surrounded by panes of bulletproof glass that form a protective wall across the stage, according to a live stream and photos taken at the event.
Storage containers have been stacked around the perimeter of the space to create additional walls and block sight lines. Snipers have been positioned on roofs at the venue, where old aircraft are sitting behind the podium and a large American flag is suspended from cranes.
Trump and Vance have spent the week visiting battleground states in their busiest week of campaigning in months.
“We’ve never had numbers like this. They don’t exist,” he said.
On July 13, the former president narrowly escaped death as he was shot at by a gunman perched on the roof of a building 400 feet from the rally held in Butler, Pennsylvania. One rallygoer was killed and two were injured, while the suspected shooter, Thomas Crooks, was shot and killed by a Secret Service sniper.
Following the incident—the first attempted assassination on a current or former president in more than 40 years—questions emerged about how the Secret Service prepared for the rally. The agency’s director, Kimberly Cheatle, stepped down from office days after the incident and a day after she was grilled by House Republicans and Democrats during a congressional hearing.
Reflecting the importance of North Carolina in this year’s election, the trip is Trump’s second to the state in just the past week. Last Wednesday, he appeared in Asheville, North Carolina, for a speech on the economy.
Trump won North Carolina by a comfortable margin in 2016. The state delivered the former president his closest statewide margin of victory four years ago and is once again considered a key battleground in 2024.
The former president’s stop in the state also comes as the Democratic National Convention (DNC) is being held in Chicago this week, where Vice President Kamala Harris and running mate Tim Walz, the Democrat governor of Minnesota, are slated to accept the party’s nomination.
On Tuesday evening, the convention featured former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama, who both targeted Trump repeatedly in their speeches. Walz is expected to speak at the DNC on Wednesday evening, and Harris will speak Thursday.
This week, Trump is visiting multiple projected battleground states.
Trump on Monday was in Pennsylvania and talked about the economy, and on Tuesday, he visited Michigan and spoke about policing. According to a campaign email, he will head to Arizona on Thursday and will go to Nevada on Friday.
Since the shooting in July, federal law enforcement officials have not disclosed whether Crooks had a motive or a particular political animus. The suspected shooter’s family also has not issued a public statement about the incident.
FBI Director Christopher Wray testified before House lawmakers last month that the agency suspected Crooks flew a drone about 600 feet away from the rally stage hours before it was held.
“It appears that around 3:50 p.m., 4 p.m., in that window, on the day of the shooting, that the shooter was flying the drone around the area,” Wray said.
Investigators also were able to gain access to Crooks’s phone, Wray said, describing the effort as a “significant technical challenge.” Crooks was discovered to have been using encrypted apps to communicate.
