Eighty-four days after former President Donald Trump was nearly assassinated by a 20-year-old sniper, the Republican presidential candidate returned to Butler, Pennsylvania, to hold a massive rally just over a month before the Nov. 5 election.
Elon Musk and former President Donald Trump at a campaign event in Butler, Pennsylvania, October 5, 2024 [AP Photo/Alex Brandon]
Pennsylvania, with its 19 electoral votes, is considered a must-win state by both Democrats and Republicans. Almost all polls that have been conducted since Vice President Kamala Harris took over the Democratic presidential nomination show: Harris and Trump are virtually tied in Pennsylvania at 47 percent.
The July attack victims were remembered with honors, remembrances and prayers at the rally at the Butler Farm Show. While Trump was injured in the ear by a grazing shot, two other people suffered serious injuries. Corey Comperatore, a 50-year-old Trump supporter, husband and father of two, was killed.
In addition to remembering Comperatore, almost all speakers referred to Trump’s near-miss as evidence that none other than God himself was watching over the former president to win the election and restore America under the banner of “Make America Great Again.” “big”.
Elon Musk, Trump’s largest donor and the world’s richest supporter of fascism, also appeared in person at the rally for the first time.
Since Musk’s preferred candidate, the right-wing and authoritarian governor of Florida Ron DeSantis, dropped out of the presidential race in January, the billionaire, CEO of Tesla and Space X and co-owner of X/Twitter, has turned on the money for Trump. According to recent reports from Bloomberg, Musk’s Super Political Action Committee America PAC has spent more than $71 million to support Trump in this year’s election.
The Musk-backed PAC has “nearly quadrupled” its pro-Trump advertising on X since August, spending nearly $161,000, according to a recent analysis by the Washington Post. The Post According to him, the Trump campaign also spends a lot of money on social media. A Trump campaign account spent more than $700,000 on fundraising appeals by October 1st.
Business Insider reported last month that Musk’s PAC is spending millions to support at least 14 Republicans in their congressional races, in addition to Trump himself. The report went on to say that Musk’s PAC is “spending a lot of money on digital ads and campaign advertising. In each case, the PAC is spending a similar amount to support the GOP candidate and negatively portray the Democratic candidate.”
On Monday after the rally, Musk’s America PAC launched a petition to encourage workers and the poor to support Trump’s campaign. The petition calls on supporters of “Free Speech & Bear Arms!” to convince voters in swing states to sign the petition. The PAC promises to pay $47 for each endorsement, with the goal of reaching one million voters.
Because of the iconic venue and Musk’s financial support, the Secret Service estimated about 21,000 people attended Saturday’s rally. This is significantly more than is usual at Trump events, where only a few thousand supporters usually show up, many of them repeatedly.
Trump began his speech by remembering the victims of the shooting before launching into his usual fascist tirades. He promised mass deportations of “immigrants from Congo and Yemen,” whom he described as “murderers” and “terrorists,” and spoke at length about the threat of the “enemy from within,” meaning all those who oppose his authoritarian agenda oppose.
About halfway through the speech, Trump called a cheering Musk onto the stage. Before he began speaking, the errant billionaire, dressed all in black, had literally jumped onto the stage. Musk began his speech by pointing to his black “Make America Great Again” baseball cap and shouting, “As you can see, I’m not just MAGA, I’m dark MAGA!”
Elon Musk’s updated Twitter/X profile picture wearing a black “Make America Great Again” cap [Photo: Elon Musk]
“Dark MAGA” isn’t just another color. It is a right-wing and openly fascist version of Trump’s fascist movement in the USA. “Dark MAGA” memes and aesthetics are being adapted by QAnon and neo-Nazi groups within the Trump movement, which call on Trump to retaliate violently against political opponents.
This “Dark MAGA” meme depicts Trump with laser eyes and the words “Mass Deport Illegals.”
Hampton Stall and Daniel Grober of the Global Network on Extremism & Technology wrote in April 2022 that “Dark MAGA” had emerged in right-wing extremist forums and online spaces:
Dark MAGA seems to be more of an overarching banner for different groups and ideologies that are often in conflict with one another. Neo-Nazi iconography can be found alongside red MAGA hats and ominous depictions of Donald Trump. For this reason, “Dark MAGA” can be viewed as a bracket that accepts ideas and symbolism from the “Iron March” networks rather than directly deriving from them.
Stall and Grober note that Dark MAGA’s images and videos have “a red-black or red-blue filter over the images” and add: “The figures may feature laser eyes, usually a light blue hue are. Sun gears, swastikas, and wolffish are often seen near the image, which may also contain a blatant threat of violence or revenge. Trump is strongly represented…”
“Dark MAGA” meme threatening mass deportation and showing Trump with a sun gear in the background
Iron March was the largest neo-Nazi and fascist forum on the internet until it was blocked in 2017. A simple search for #DarkMAGA on the platform yields thousands of images of Trump, and now Musk, in red and black with glowing laser eyes and threats of violence against their political opponents.
“Dark MAGA” memes often repeat Trump’s “big lie” that the 2020 election was “stolen.”
After Musk declared his fascist loyalty to Trump, he raved about how the dictatorship candidate had reacted to the Butler assassination and recalled that Trump had shouted: “Fight! Fight! Fight!”, while “blood ran down his face.”
Musk urged those in attendance to register to vote, while also inciting violent elements and saying the other side wanted to abolish free speech and the right to bear arms. Supporting the fascist lie spread by Trump and the Republicans that “illegal immigrants” across the country are voting Democratic en masse, Musk stated:
They actually want to take away your right to vote. There are now 14 states that do not require voter ID. California, where I used to live, just passed a law eliminating voter ID. How are you supposed to conduct a proper election without ID? This is meaningless.
The claims by Trump and the Republicans that there was widespread voter fraud in favor of the Democrats have no basis in reality. The right-wing Heritage Foundation, which has been committed to prosecuting voter fraud for decades, has documented only 1,561 cases of voter fraud out of hundreds of millions of votes.
In California, the most populous state in the United States, Heritage says it has documented 55 cases of “voter fraud” dating back to 1993. Since the November 2010 midterm elections, more than 87 million people in California have voted in general elections, according to the California Secretary of State’s Office. In the state of Texas, Heritage has uncovered only 103 cases of voter fraud from 2005 to 2022. More than 107 million votes were cast during this period, including 11 million votes in the 2020 presidential election.
Musk concluded his speech by saying, “President Trump must win to preserve the Constitution. He must win to preserve democracy in America,” before threateningly warning that if Trump doesn’t win, November’s election will be “the last election.”
Before Musk and Trump’s appearance, JD Vance, Ohio Senator and Trump’s vice presidential candidate, blamed Democrats for the Trump assassination attempts – a theme that ran throughout the event. Vance said, “Even after this terrible assassination attempt that left one man dead and nearly killed many others, they continue to use dangerous, inflammatory rhetoric,” meaning Democrats.
Eric Trump accused Democrats of trying to kill his father, saying:
They’ve been trying to get my father every second since he came down that golden escalator… They’ve been trying to slander us, they’ve been trying to bankrupt us, they’ve been after us. They impeached him twice, they went after his Supreme Court justices, they weaponized the entire legal system… Radical left-wing attorneys general, radical left-wing district attorneys in every radical left-wing town in the country were after my father. They tried to throw him out of the race… And then they tried to kill him. They tried to kill him and that’s because the Democratic Party is incapable of doing anything right. You can’t do anything right.
Trump himself specifically blamed Democrats for the shooting, saying:
Over the last eight years, those who want to prevent us from achieving that future have slandered me, accused me, tried to disqualify me from voting, and who knows, maybe even tried to kill me. But I have never stopped fighting for you and I never will.
Appearing on ABC’s “This Week” with George Stephanopoulos on Sunday, House Speaker Mike Johnson refused to condemn comments by Eric Trump or his father that Democrats were behind the July assassination attempt in Butler. Despite repeated attempts by Stephanopoulos to secure a conviction, Johnson refused, saying he needed more “context.”
