A year after Trump’s near-mounting, friends and allies see some signs of a changed man

Washington – Washington (AP) – President Donald Trump wax on stage At the Iowa State Fairgrounds earlier this month, kick -off of the country 250th birthday Celebration, when he heard what sounded like fireworks in the distance.

“Have I heard what I think I heard?” Trump noticed while he spoke from behind a wall of thick, bulletproof glass. “Don’t worry, it’s just fireworks. I hope. Famous last words,” he joked, laughs and cheers.

“You should always think positively,” he continued. “I didn’t like that sound either.”

The comments, just a few days before the first birthday of Trump’s almost -Sassing In Butler, Pennsylvania served as a grim memory of the persistent impact of the day when a shooter opened the fire during a campagnerally, grazed the ear of Trump and killed one of his supporters in the crowd.

The attack The 2024 campaign is brought to the fore dramatically and launched an amazing rack of 10 days that Trump’s included triumphant At the Republican National Convention with a connected ear, President Joe Biden’s decision to give up his re -election offer And the increase in vice -president Kamala Harris as his successor.

A year after the coming of millimeters from a completely different result, Trump is still the same Trump, according to friends and assistants. But they see drawing, except that they are on stage on stage that his brush has changed him in some ways with death: he is more attentive and grateful, they say, and speaks openly about how he believes that he was saved by God to save the country and serve a second term, so that he was hedding even more in reaching his distant agenda.

“I think it is always in mind,” said Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, an old friend and ally who had close contact with Trump after the shooting and joined him that night in New Jersey after being treated in a hospital in Pennsylvania. “He is still a rough and tumbling guy, you know. He has not become Zen -Buddhist. But I think he, I will say this, more grateful. He is more attention for his friends,” he said, pointing out that Trump sends him a message on his birthday earlier this week.

Graham added: “It’s just a miracle that he is not dead. He was definitely a man who believed he had a second lease agreement.”

While many who survive traumatic events try to block them out of memory, Trump, instead, surrounded Memorabilia to commemorate one of the darkest episodes in modern political history. He decorated the White House and His golf clubs depict The moment after the shooting When he got up, his fist stuck dramatically in the air and sang: “Fight, fight, fight!”

A Painting the scene Now hangs prominently in the foyer of the state floor of the White House near the stairs To the President’s home. He started earlier this year Show a bronze sculpture From the tableau in the Oval Office on a side table next to the determined desk.

And while he said in his speech at the Republican Convention That he would talk about what had happened once, he often shares the story of how he turned his head at the right time to show off his “all-time favorite chart in History” by Southern Border Crossings that He credits for saving his life.

During a press conference in the briefing room of the White House last month, he acknowledged persistent physical effects of the shooting.

“I get that throbbing feeling from time to time,” he said, gesturing to his ear. “But you know what, that’s ok. This is a dangerous company. What I do is a dangerous company.”

In a statement that was released by the White House on Sunday, Trump said: “It remains my strong conviction that God only saved me that day for a fair goal: to restore our beloved republic to greatness and save our nation from those who seek his fall.”

Trump spent Sunday the birthday with attending FIFA Club World Cup Soccer Final in East Rutherford, New Jersey.

Trump’s Staff Chef, Susie Wiles, who was with him as his then campaign chef, said in A podcast interview released last week That Trump ran away from the shooting and believed that he had been spared for a reason.

“I would say I think he believes he was saved. I. And he would never do that – even if he thought it before, I don’t think he would have admitted it. And he will do that now,” she said “Pod Force One.”

She, also credited divine intervention. The card, she noticed, “was always the last graph in the rotation. And it was always on the other side. So to ask him for eight minutes to ask that graph, and to let it come on the side that is opposite, made sure that he looked in a different direction and lifted his head a bit because it just didn’t happen. And that just happened because it happened.

As a result, when Trump says things that are “dutifully – every president says” God blessing America ” – well, it is now in -depth with him, and it is more personal.”

She also credited to helping Trump’s public perception during the campaign.

“For the American audience to see a person who was such a hunter when he was that day, I think, as terrible and tragic as it could have been, it turned out to be something that people showed his character. And that is useful,” she said.

“You know, I have a duty to do well, I feel, because I was really saved,” Trump told Fox News Friday. “I owe a lot. And I think – I hope – the reason I was saved was to save our country.”

Roger Stone, an old friend and informal adviser, noted that Trump had other brushes with death, including a last-minute decision not to go to Atlantic City That crashed in 1989 and another near-mounting two months after Butler when the American secret service day saw a man Point a gun through the fence Close where Trump bumped.

Stone said he found the president “more serene and more determined after the attempt of his life” in Butler.

“He immediately told me that he believed that he was spared by God to restore the nation to greatness, and that he deeply believes that He is now being protected by the Lord,” he said.

Ralph Reed, chairman of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, agreed.

“I think for people who know the president, it is generally believed to have changed him. I mean, how was it not? Imagine that you were if you were who he was and if you didn’t turn your head at the time,” he said. “He knew he was lucky to live.”

Given how close Trump a completely different result came, Reed said: “It is difficult not to feel at a certain level that the hand of provision protected him for a greater goal. And there are people with whom I said they said they were sure that for that reason he would win. That there was a reason.”

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Associated Press writer Nicole Winfield in Rome contributed to this report.