AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
The shooting at former President Trump's rally in Butler, Penn., yesterday shocked people around the country. In Overland Park, Kan., Kimber Smith (ph), a surgical nurse, told the Kansas News Service she's worried the incident will inspire more political violence in the country.
KIMBER SMITH: And I think that it is scary, and it is wildly immature to think that resulting to violence or resulting to hopefully someone's death is going to change the political climate of the country or anybody's opinion by using violence or by using force.
RASCOE: Jim Worthington is Pennsylvania state delegate chair to the Republican National Convention and spoke to member station WHYY in Philadelphia. He was watching the rally on TV before leaving for the Convention in Milwaukee.
JIM WORTHINGTON: I mean, it's going to galvanize - I mean, look, we couldn't be any further behind President Trump. Now you've got people that are not only, you know, committed to win for him. They are incensed now.
RASCOE: At the rally yesterday, two individuals, a Trump supporter and the suspected gunmen, were killed. Two others were injured. Joining us now from Pennsylvania is Chris Potter. He's the political editor at member station WESA in Pittsburgh. Thanks for joining us, Chris.
CHRIS POTTER: Thank you for having me.
RASCOE: So, this rally was in Butler, about 30 miles north of Pittsburgh. You were watching a feed of the rally while a colleague of yours was there. What did you and your colleague hear in the aftermath of the shooting?
POTTER: Well, I mean, people were shocked, of course, and concerned about Mr. Trump and the bystanders who were struck. They were also very angry. Just a few minutes after the shooting, we could hear people shouting things like, you wanted political violence - now you've got it. This - Butler is a county where in both 2016 and 2020, voters preferred Donald Trump over his Democratic rival by margins of, like, 2 to 1. And these rallies are really communal events. People come from all over the region and beyond for them. This was the Trump campaign's first rally in Western Pennsylvania this year, so we did see a lot of folks out there. And there's a kind of, you know, festival atmosphere at these things. It's not just about seeing Trump, but about seeing each other. And that got sundered, too. We talked to a resident of Butler named Rick Ivanisin who spoke with us a bit.
RICK IVANISIN: Very mad and worried that Trump was hit, and hit with a bullet, and I'm just upset? We just had - to come here to have a good time. And people got killed or hurt. And that's - kind of sucks.
POTTER: And as you might expect, it did not take long for some people to kind of tie this shooting into a broader sense that forces have always been arrayed against Mr. Trump, even as he always triumphs over them.
RASCOE: As you said, Butler County and many of the other suburbs surrounding Pittsburgh have come out for Trump in the last two elections. What makes the former president so popular there?
POTTER: Yeah, I mean, Butler and some of these other counties that kind of ring the city of Pittsburgh are really the kind of communities that Trump's message is tailored to. Butler has a lot of farm land in it, but a good bit of manufacturing as well. One of its biggest private sector employers, in fact, is a steel mill. This has been for a long time a staunchly Republican county. For a long time, a big chunk of it was represented in the state legislature by one of the state's most conservative lawmakers. This is a guy who rose to fame by making immigration issues a center of his identity, even though, to be honest, we don't have a lot of immigration around here.
Butler itself really has actually had a pretty robust economy and a growing population. There are some fast-growing suburbs that feed in the city. But other places outside have really struggled with the collapse of manufacturing and coal mining. So Trump's message really resonates, when he talks about Chinese imports or fossil fuels. And in fact, he was talking about immigration when the shots ran out.
RASCOE: The FBI has identified the suspect as a 20-year-old man from Bethel Park, Penn. What can you tell us about him or that town?
POTTER: But, we don't know much about Thomas Matthew Crooks, who the FBI has identified as the shooter, or his motives. I can confirm that county voting roles identify him as a registered Republican, which I mentioned only to caution people. It's very easy to jump to conclusions at times like this. Bethel Park is a bedroom community, working to middle-class suburb. Politically, it's a bit of a swing district, where Donald Trump has done well. If you drive through that community, you can see no shortage of pro-Trump signs as you go through. And, you know, obviously, I would not be surprised if you see a lot more of those signs coming up in the days ahead.
RASCOE: Chris Potter is the politics editor at WESA in Pittsburgh. Thank you for joining us, Chris.
POTTER: Thank you for having me. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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