It’s funny. Only on Friday was I thinking about starting a blog and wondering what I could blog about. I’m a musician. I play the guitar and like to compose soundtrack style music, so I thought some posts about that could work. I’m also interested in coding, and maybe thought that I could blog about my progress on that. But I also pay the bills by working as a producer in TV news, so I thought I could maybe post a bit about that, but only a little sprinkle here and there. I’d rather focus on my other interests.
Anyway, the next day, Saturday… yesterday… as I’m writing this, me and my team were sent to cover Donald Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvannia. It turned out to be an incredible day.
Following the Formula
I’ve covered dozens of Trump rallies since 2016 and they’ve become quite formulaic to report on. The fans turn up in their thousands, he delivers meandering rants for about an hour and a quarter, during which he vilifies the media and we stand there like pantomine bad guys while the audience boos and shouts abuse at us. Then we pick the soundbites we want to highlight and all go home. They’d become events that I didn’t look forward to and a chore.
This one started the same. The big news we thought could possibly happen is that he might announce his Vice President pick for the election, but failing that we were on the lookout for him attacking Joe Biden for his various embarrassing bumbles and stumbles he’s been making recently. My correspondent had already written the script before he even started, which is how formulaic the things had gotten.
Gunfire or Fireworks?
I was listening to the speech and looking out for those soundbites to go into our story. We had not been granted credentials and so we were based outside the rally in the field in Butler’s Farm. I was watching the speech on youtube so there was probably about a minute’s delay from what was actually going on. About four minutes into his speech I heard (in the real world) the gunfire. But because it wasn’t matching up with what I was seeing on the delayed feed, I dismissed the sound as fireworks. When the feed finally caught up, I realised what was going on. Jesus! Someone’s tried to shoot Trump!
A Dicey Time
We all kicked into gear with a sense of disbelief, thinking shit shit shiiiiit! What now? All sorts of questions were going through my head… had Trump been shot?… who else had been shot?… is the shooter going on a rampage inside?… is the shooter still out there?.. is there more than one shooter?
Soon, I saw people starting to come out of the entrance. Hundreds of them. My first thought was. Is that’s it? It’s over? As if they’d all stick around and Trump would come back out after a short break. Then I realised they were fleeing. Some were running. Most were visibly upset. Kids were crying. Some of more knuckleheaded ones were screaming about it being the media’s fault and pointing in our general direction. For about half an hour, things were dicey and we wondered whether we’d need to get out.
Sharing Stories
Soon afterwards though, people started coming up to us, wanting to tell us what they’d witnessed. I mean, they’d just seen the attempted assassination of a former president. For many of them, their hero. No matter what you think of him, it was truly shocking for us all.
Some were very close to the action. One guy showed us his professional level photos he’d taken. At that point none of us knew whether Trump had been hit. But his photos clearly showed the blood dripping down from his ear. Another couple of ladies told us how they were close to a man who they said was shot in the head and died and others who were wounded. It was truly harrowing stuff.
A Strange Return to Normalcy
But gradually, there was a strange sense of life getting back to normal creeping in, soon after it all happened. None of the dozens of vendors… hats, t-shirts, flags and other crap… had moved and slowly people started milling about and hanging around, buying things again and chatting about what they’d seen.
For us, we were deep in going live mode, putting interviewees in front of the camera and hearing from them. We worked long into the night for our editors, hungry for every extra detail to be fleshed out and talked about. It’s a moment of history and I was there.