Presidential campaigns are as much about policy as they are about marketing. What a candidate says and how they say it—especially when understood in context—can define their personality.
On Saturday, President Trump's team put on a master class in presidential campaigning by combining his raw talent for holding rallies with explosive confidence and an injection of creative genius in choreography.
Trump was in Butler, PA, a small, sleepy town that is now recognizable around the world and will make an appearance in history textbooks for being the place where a gunman attempted to assassinate the 45th president in July.
The Trump campaign was taking on the mainstream media, the Left, the Harris campaign, and the RINO Republicans head-on for attempting to play down the awful and historic incident. Most media outlets don't even mention it anymore, just as they have conveniently forgotten the second attempt on Trump's life by the tree line of his golf resort.
The goal was to remind America what Trump went through when a bullet grazed his ear, splashing his face in blood. No candidate in modern history has been the target of an attack so dangerous that had Trump not turned to a giant screen displaying how he had clamped down on illegal immigration; the bullet would have hit him in the head.
Trump's caricature - as the brave person who will endure all obstacles to survive and hit back - was cemented that day when he raised his fist above the heap of Secret Service agents to indicate to his loving supporters that he was still alive. He then asked them to "Fight, fight, fight!" in the most iconic moment in presidential campaigning in modern history.
It was an image that terrified the mainstream media, an intensely moving picture of a man unafraid in the face of extreme adversity. It was an image that could win elections. So, the media chose to hide the image or suppress it.
Trump's plan on Saturday was to hold a rally on the same grounds to refresh the media's collective loss of memory. Knowing well that no assassin would attempt a repeat shot - more so now that he is traveling with presidential-level security from the Secret Service, including a bullet-proof shield protecting him - Trump looked at a sea of people in front of him, one of the largest campaign audiences this season. He had Eric and Lara Trump with him.
But the star of the evening was Elon Musk, making his first appearance on the campaign trail. Musk is revered for his resurrection of Twitter and allowing people around the world to express themselves freely. In a way, Musk was a savior of fundamental human ideals, standing next to a savior who was going to Make America Great Again.
Every minute of Trump's time was choreographed to perfection. As soon as he got off his campaign plane, he made his way to the waiting embrace of family members of the volunteer fireman, Corey Comperatore, who was killed that July day. Trump, who had set up a GoFundMe campaign for the family moments after he was shot and raised millions of dollars for other victims who were wounded, was meeting the family for the first time after the assassination attempt. It was only fitting that he would shake hands with them first.
At 6:11 PM, the rally stopped as Trump called on everyone to stand in honor of those fallen or wounded. The great British author Alistair MacLean once wrote that silence can be loud. And so it was as everyone in attendance took their memories back to that fateful day, spilling the sea of humanity into a world of grateful quiet. It was a surreal moment, one that earned the grudging respect of Hollywood directors 2,000 miles away.
But Hollywood had no idea that a drumbeat moment was yet to come.
Trump picked up the microphone to speak and began, "As I was saying..." and looked to the right at that giant billboard displaying the illegal immigration slide.
It was a brilliant moment of artistic expression with as much meaning embedded as a million words. The direct meaning was that Trump was resuming his speech from the exact point where he left off the last time when he was rudely interrupted by a vicious gunman willing to break the law. The indirect metaphor was that Trump was resuming his campaign for becoming president after being rudely interrupted by the media and Leftist cabal that plotted to take the 2020 election away from him.
President John F. Kennedy said, "Ich bin ein Berliner," during his speech in West Berlin on June 26, 1963, to criticize the Soviet Union and express solidarity with West Germans just as the Cold War started.
Former President Reagan had his "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" moment that signified the end of the Cold War.
President George W. Bush visited Ground Zero just days after the 9/11 terror attacks, stood on the rubble of the World Trade Center rubble, grabbed a bullhorn from a nearby NYFD fireman, and said, "We can hear you!"
Trump's "As I was saying..." falls into the same category of presidential greatness. The media knows it - so expect them to ignore this poignant moment in American history.
