Former US president Donald Trump, injured at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, July 13, 2024. ANNA MONEYMAKER / AFP
A white metal roof over a beige hangar was added to the list of emblematic sites of political violence in the United States on Saturday, July 13. From that building, home to the consulting laboratory American Glass Research, shots were fired targeting Donald Trump at the start of the rally he was holding less than 140 yards away, on the agricultural fairgrounds of Butler, a rural town in Pennsylvania with a population 13,500.
The attack immediately joined the country's collective consciousness, especially since it was filmed live. Although the former president escaped safely, the white roof on which the gunman stood is likely to be long remembered, like Dealey Plaza, in Dallas, Texas, where President John F. Kennedy was killed on November 22, 1963, by a gunman ambushed from the top floor of the school book depository. Similarly, there is the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, where Martin Luther King was shot dead on April 4, 1968, by a right-wing extremist. Or the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, through which Robert F. Kennedy was walking on June 5, 1968, after a victory speech in the California Democratic primary, where a Palestinian-Jordanian man opened fire. Or the Hilton Hotel in Washington, where Ronald Reagan was shot and seriously injured on March 30, 1981, 90 days after his inauguration, by a disturbed man seeking the attention of actress Jodie Foster.
