(Bloomberg) -- Republican nominee Donald Trump rallied supporters at the site of a July assassination attempt, returning to the Pennsylvania venue where a gunman’s bullet bloodied his ear and upended the presidential campaign.
“I return to Butler in the aftermath of tragedy and heartache to deliver a simple message to the people of Pennsylvania and to the people of America,” Trump told the crowd Saturday. Our movement, he said, is “nearer to victory than ever before.”
Trump invited billionaire Elon Musk to join him on stage, calling him “a truly incredible guy.”
“This is the most important election of our lifetime,” Musk said in his first onstage appearance with Trump in the campaign. “President Trump must win to preserve the Constitution. He must win to preserve democracy in America.”
Locked in a tight contest for the White House with Vice President Kamala Harris exactly a month before Election Day, Trump promoted his appearance in the swing state for days.
Harris has chipped away at Trump’s lead in several battleground states, according to the latest Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll. The race is a dead heat with neither candidate showing a clear advantage heading into Election Day on Nov. 5.
“And if we win Pennsylvania, we will win the whole thing,” Trump said Saturday.
The rally amounted to a pilgrimage for some of Trump’s most ardent allies and fans. Dozens of lawmakers and prominent donors were slated to attend, along with thousands of rallygoers packing the fairgrounds, a setting that Trump’s aides say gives him energy.
John Paulson, the hedge-fund billionaire who is a major Trump donor and a potential Treasury Secretary in a future administration, spoke briefly to the crowd before Trump took the stage.
“When he is elected president, he will deliver the greatest economic boom to America that we’ve ever seen,” Paulson said.
Brady Marnell, a 59-year-old from San Diego who said he has been traveling the East Coast to attend Trump’s rallies, called the return to Butler “bittersweet.”
“I feel like it’s an important thing to finish,” he said. “This one is more about reflection and looking back to the events of July.”
For Musk, the chief executive officer of Tesla Inc. and SpaceX and the world’s richest man, it’s his most prominent moment yet as part of a political campaign. After years of keeping a low political profile, he has emerged in the 2024 election as a key Trump supporter.
Musk has been a favorite talking point of Trump’s in recent days as the former president praised the deployment of SpaceX’s Starlink equipment to help restore communications in US towns ravaged by Hurricane Helene. He also slammed the Biden administration’s disaster response and made unfounded claims about billions of dollars being redirected to support undocumented immigrants.
Musk launched a pro-Trump super PAC in May and publicly endorsed the Republican nominee hours after the assassination attempt in Butler. He was joined by billionaire Bill Ackman amid an outpouring of support for Trump after the attack, which killed one attendee and left two wounded.
Musk’s most visible support for Trump shows up on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter that he bought in 2022 for $44 billion. In August, he hosted a warm but glitch-delayed conversation with Trump on X in which the tech mogul pitched a role for himself should Trump win a second White House term.
Trump seized on the idea, offering Musk a role in his next administration and floating a Cabinet position for him.
As X’s owner and most-followed account, Musk sets the tone for X and has shifted the entire site toward the political right.
His hands-off approach to what users post has sparked criticism in the US and globally for allowing disinformation to flourish, including recent falsehoods echoed by Trump that that migrants in an Ohio town were behind a wave of local crime and to blame for the disappearances of cats and dogs.
Trump spoke to the crowd at the Butler Farm Show fairgrounds from behind protective glass, a safety measure emphasizing the heightened security put in place after the July 13 attack. Security drones were also visible, as well as a sniper behind Trump.
--With assistance from Michael Shepard.
(Updates with Musk comments from third paragraph.)
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