Butler County under a microscope following assassination attempt
Following the July 13 shooting at the rally for former President Donald Trump, national media outlets flooded Meridian Road, putting even the residents of the road where the shooting took place under a national microscope.
Dana Jennings Peffer saw media as she drove to work, when she traveled to the grocery store and as she stopped for gas. Some were camped out by the Sheetz on Whitestown Road. She observed other news vehicles parked by the Butler Township building.
For about four days after the shooting, the media presence remained intense in Meridian, she said, even overwhelming.
“There were safety concerns about media on Meridian Road,” Peffer said. “There were so many media people there — we were worried about others being hurt and people crossing. It was a circus for week.
“We wanted to get on with it and couldn't.”
It would take more than a week for the road to empty of its news vans, until Monday, July 22, when members of the U.S. House of Representatives Homeland Security committee came from across the country to tour the site.
Several reporters from the Associated Press rotated through the area throughout the week, with Michael Sisak, a New York City-based reporter, staying from July 16 to July 20, to cover the fallout of the near-assassination.
Unlike many other stories Sisak has covered in his own career, the attempted assassination was a challenge because its effects continue to unfold.
“This has so many elements; the human element, what failings may have been there, the memorial of the man who died, the people who were injured and the lingering effects on the community,” he said. “Coming off this global tragedy, it's something I have not experienced before in my career.”
Paul Jansen, a U.S. correspondent for the Netherlands-based De Telegraaf, arrived in Butler on Tuesday, July 23, to find out how the local community reacted to the attack at the rally, which left the shooter and a Buffalo Township man dead, and three more men injured, including Trump.
Jansen, a former resident of the Netherlands, has been working in the U.S. for about a year, covering politics and other stories relevant to a European audience. Jansen said his conversations with Butler residents about the rally were mainly centered around how they are processing the assassination attempt.
“It’s also interesting to see after two weeks how things have developed,” Jansen said. “Is it back to normal, has it traumatized a community, how are people feeling about the investigations, how are people feeling about each other?”
Jeffrey Louderback, a New York-based reporter for the Epoch Times, said Friday, July 19, he has been around the nation covering politics, but had never been to Butler County. He said he stayed in Harmar Township, Allegheny County in the days following the assassination attempt to cover its lingering effects on the community, and to cover the July 19 funeral for Corey Comperatore, who died at the rally.
“I had never been to Butler, never been to Freeport or Sarver,” Louderback said. “A lot of times you are somewhere you never thought you’d be for an event you never thought you’d cover.”
U.S. politics are influential to the rest of the world, or at least, the few-million regular readers of De Telegraaf, Jansen said. Jansen said the Netherlands’ government operates differently than the U.S., but voters are interested in similar issues like public funding and immigration.
“It’s a very small country — 18 million inhabitants — and we have what we call a parliament democracy,” Jansen said. “We have a lot of parties and they have to form a coalition to govern, so it’s not a winner-takes-all, like you have here.”
The sight of numerous news vans with out-of-state license plates was a double-edged sword for Jack Cohen, president of the Butler County Tourism & Convention Bureau. He was happy to see new people come to Butler County, many for the first time, but the circumstances surrounding their visits was an unfortunate event.
“It doesn't reflect Butler County at all,” Cohen said of the assassination attempt. “It's a sad thing that we'll carry for the farm show grounds for a while.”
Cohen also said that while the event put Butler County on the map for many people around the world, he hopes that people who actually visit the area find a positive experience. It was his hope that visitors found a good experience with the locales they stayed in and ate at while reporting the story.
“Our hotels are filled with them,” Cohen said, of visiting reporters. “I met a couple of them. The AP was at the Tesla (BioHealing Wellness Hotel and Resort) and stayed there for three or four days.”
Additionally, with the microscope on her neighborhood, Peffer said what the national and international press are missing is context: she said she’s encountered confusion over why the rally was held in Butler County to begin with. She said people have made assumptions about the area, which she has tried to clear up in her conversations.
“People from the East Coast automatically assume things about Pennsylvania, and what people assume is that PA is a swing state — they assume ... it’s not in the South, it must be Democratic,” Peffer said. “I’m like, OK, hold up — this is a heavily, heavily Republican area. I’m from the South, and we laugh because we call it Kentucky. I see more Confederate flags here than I see at home.”
