Dear Americans,
At 6:48 PM on July 13, my sister and I were chatting about the 1995 movie version of Pride and Prejudice when we were interrupted by an e-mail alert from a church friend. It read: “Pray for former President Trump. It appears that he may have been shot at a rally in Butler, PA. I believe he is ok and was rushed off the stage by the secret service detail.”
I couldn’t believe it. Please, God, no! I prayed.
Sure, my grandparents talk about when JFK was assassinated; my parents lived through the day Reagan was shot. Yet I’ve always told myself, I’ll never live to see that. I’ve lived through 9/11, the Coronavirus scare, and 10/7, and I thought that was enough history for any young woman. But I had yet to experience the feelings of the nightmare of July 13. I went absolutely numb.
When I saw the pictures (they look like a new version of the Iwo Jima flag raising photo), my first thought checking my emotion was, Maybe it’s just AI. The left wants us to panic; they want to incite a riot. I told myself not to believe it . . . not yet.
My fingers flew over the keyboard as I checked various news platforms. Fox, CBS, Epoch Times, The Daily Caller, The Blaze—they had all grabbed the story. And then I watched the video. When President Trump flinched, so did I.
What particularly struck me was that it was all very undramatic, unlike what happens in the movies. A sunny Saturday in Pennsylvania. The thirteenth of July. Just a speech, a pop, pop, pop, and he ducked. I had just lived through one of the biggest days in history—when a man in a red ballcap was shot at.
After seeing the video, I was screaming inside, They tried to kill my president! Of course, during that tense moment, I forgot all about Biden, and I forgot all about the November election. I only thought, He’s my president, and they just tried to kill him!
I could feel the nation, even the world—everyone on their phones and tablets, taking in the news headlines as fast as they were filed. I felt stillness. I felt universal shock. And I also felt a sense of American togetherness.
Reading the comments on the news articles pouring in, I saw that “just pray” was most people’s reaction. “Thank God Trump’s all right,” they were saying. However, there were a few comments lashing out in hate and spite, which made me dismayed, because we can’t act this way. We can’t give the left a chance to blame us for anything. We can’t let it get to us like this. A president once noted that hate will only destroy us.
We must stay calm. We’ve got to come together as a strong nation once again, and the assassination attempt is just the thing to show us that. What we need is faith in God, more praying Americans, and a wave of patriotism. We can get good out of this if we only try.
—N. M.
