Trump Rally Goers Who Witnessed Assassination Attempt Tell MSNBC About Lingering Trauma, Returning to New Rally as ‘Final Step in Healing’
Two rally goers who were in attendance at the Butler, Pennsylvania rally where former President Donald Trump was shot at in July and another rally goer was killed told MSNBC they’ll be attending Trump’s Saturday rally at the same spot as part of their “healing” process.
NBC News correspondent Dasha Burns reported from Butler on Friday where she has been talking to people who attended that July rally, including some she interviewed in the immediate aftermath of the assassination attempt.
Donna Hutz and Joe Hutz, mother and son, were two of those rally goers and they spoke to Burns about lingering trauma from the shooting and attending Saturday’s rally. Burns joined MSNBC’s Ana Cabrera on Friday to share her report from Butler.
“When I got back from the Trump rally, it was very tough for me emotionally. I ended up in trauma therapy. You can’t forget it. The way I described it to my therapist, I said, I can’t get out of the bleachers,” Donna Hutz said.
Her son had trouble adjusting back into his industrial job.
“The worst I had is I work in industrial and the banging of a hammer, someone would drop something, it would just make me jump, almost ready to run out of the damn building,” he said.
Burns reported that both are attending Saturday’s rally, but they have some anxiety about the day’s events.
“They are both coming back on Saturday. They feel like it is part of the healing process. They want to go, but understandably, there is still a lot of anxiety there and Donna says she’s going to be looking around and watching the security protocols, but she’s excited to kind of take that final step in healing,” Burns reported.
Burns noted earlier in her report the security differences she saw at the rally site in Butler compared to July.
“Last time you could walk around pretty easily. People could roam in and out of the rally site. Now it is fully locked down. It is very difficult to get anywhere near the area,” she said. “They’re putting up physical barriers to block lines of sight from outside of the rally. So just a massive, massive difference here.”
Watch above via MSNBC.
