LAURA INGRAHAM: What I saw in Butler

View host Exclusive interview with Laura Ingraham with former President Trump, Monday nights at 7:00 p.m. ET on “The Ingraham Angle” on Fox News Channel.

There are still four weeks until Election Day and voting has already begun in many states. According to all analysts, the race will be extremely close. And over the weekend, President Trump returned to Butler, Pennsylvania – where he survived an assassination attempt in July. The event — one of the most impressive he has ever conducted — provided a unique opportunity to assess the status of the race and President Trump's place in American history. Here are some observations:

Firstly, the musk factor. His performance for Trump and his urgent appeal to voters are monumental. He speaks to a new bloc of highly educated voters who are not traditionally Republican and yet recognize that President Trump must win to preserve our constitutional freedoms. For months, a number of former Democrats – including Robert Kennedy Jr., former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard and RFK's former Vice President Nicole Shanahan – have been warning us that the people supporting Vice President Kamala Harris have built a political machine so powerful that If this is the case it threatens our entire political system.

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Consider what Harris's supporters have done in recent years:

• They opened America's borders and did everything they could to make it as easy as possible for non-Americans to enter this country, receive government benefits, and ultimately vote in our elections.
• They have made the Democratic Party their own private fiefdom. Democrats no longer have contentious primaries or even serious debates about what positions they should take on the issue or who they should nominate for important offices. Harris' supporters are so powerful that they ended President Biden's career within weeks. They are so strong that they nominated Harris as the Democratic candidate without a real debate, even though she has a dismal political record. In the states where they govern, such as California, state governments have become one-party oligarchies with elected officials such as governors. Gavin Newsom and JB Pritzker feel free to ignore the wishes of their people. Harris' supporters now want to spread this system across the country.
• They have made it clear that they want to take action against anyone who speaks out against them by banning them from the internet if possible and destroying companies like X that do not follow their agenda.
• They put many of their political opponents in prison and did everything they could to put President Trump himself in prison.

Elon Musk understands that none of us are safe if these people win again – if they can put an unqualified puppet like Harris in the White House.

Secondly, JD Vance continues to excel and impress. This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who has followed him over the past few years (including his frequent appearances on “The Ingraham Angle”). His rise was one of the biggest developments this year.

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At the start of the year, many in Washington hoped that if they could beat President Trump again, the America First movement he led would be crushed. They openly advocated for people like former Rep. Liz Cheney to retake her seat in the GOP. They expected that after these elections the Republican Party would return to its role as a junior partner of the establishment. But now — after crushing the vice presidential debate — the establishment is learning that the 40-year-old Vance is a compelling politician who will likely be a national figure for the next 30 years.

Still, Vance is no anomaly. Under President Trump's leadership, the GOP has built a deep group of talented leaders – like Sens. Marco Rubio, Josh Hawley, Tom Cotton, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, governors. Ron DeSantis and Glenn Youngkin – who are ready to put their own stamp on this agenda. This group of leaders will continue to develop the Republican Party into a multi-ethnic and multi-racial force for the working class.

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Third is Trump himself. The sheer size of the crowd in Butler spoke volumes. The atmosphere was electric. This time security was tight, with snipers visible on every rooftop in sight.

President Trump's success rests on his ability to convince tens of millions of voters that he is fighting for their interests. Love, gratitude, defiance and patriotism were on full display at the Butler Fairgrounds. They are not a threat to democracy – they are simply smart enough to understand how the Washington DC cabal has torn America apart.

Patrick Henry would recognize this type of patriot, as would Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln. Most importantly, these aren't mindless drones that do what they're told – if you're looking for mindless drones, look at the network hacks that espouse whatever position Democratic donors tell them. These are good, decent patriots trying to save a country they love.

Finally, I saw President Trump. To anyone who has covered politics over the last 30 years, it is obvious that President Trump is truly the only person we have covered who truly deserves a place in the history books. Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were talented and smart politicians, but they were never willing to say or do anything that truly challenged the rich and powerful. The only other Republican administrations besides Trump since 1988 – the two Bush administrations – will not be remembered as transformative.

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But President Trump has changed America. He has beaten the establishment so badly on economic issues that it has largely given up trying to talk about it. His foreign policy has been so much more successful than theirs that they don't want Harris to talk about those issues either.

He has been vilified, accused and indicted by the most powerful people in the world – faced with unlimited opposition funding by some of the richest people in the world – and he just keeps fighting.

He is in a stronger position today than he was at this point in 2016 and 2020. By boosting Vance and other young Republicans, he has built a movement that will outlive him, whatever happens in November. And he has shown incredible physical courage in moving forward in a situation where we have disturbing evidence of the sheer incompetence of the Secret Service.

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Fifty years from now, a hundred years from now – two hundred years from now – no one will care about Joe Biden, Kamala Harris or Tim Walz. They are seen as the mouthpiece of a failed establishment. But historians will continue to try to understand President Trump and his movement.

I hope they will see what I saw with Butler: Even after two impeachments, endless trials and an assassin's bullet, Trump was a man who refused to give up in his fight for America's forgotten working people.

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