The entire country was sent reeling on Saturday, when a gunman appeared to shoot former President Donald Trump in the ear during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania. Trump survived with non-life-threatening injuries, but one rally-goer was killed along with the alleged shooter. It was the first time a current or former president was shot since March 1981, when Ronald Reagan was shot in the torso in Washington D.C.
Reactions have varied wildly across the political spectrum. The vast majority of political leaders of either party, even staunch opponents of Trump, have condemned the attempted assassination and wished him well in his recovery. President Joe Biden, Trump’s presumptive 2024 general election opponent, said he spoke to Trump on the phone after the shooting.
The effects are being felt not only in the federal government, but in smaller, more local circles who participate in the presidential election. In Flagler County, this manifested with a Trump rally on the Matanzas Woods Pkwy overpass of I-95 in Palm Coast and alongside Palm Coast Pkwy just south, where a coalition of Trump faithful gathered to show their support and resolve in the wake of the frightening attack.
Multiple elected officials attended and candidates for office were in attendance at the rally. The group waved a variety of flags on the overpass, the most public display of support for ex-President Trump since a now-discontinued highway billboard that announced ‘Flagler County is Trump Country’.
Indeed, the voting numbers seem to lend credence to that bold claim – Flagler County voted for Trump with a 58.38% majority in 2016 and then with 59.90% in 2020. For context, the county’s voter registration is 48.88% Republican according to data from the Supervisor of Elections Office.
In the hours following the shooting the Flagler Republican Party announced, at the discretion of Chairman Perry Mitrano, that they’d be closing the Flagler County Republican Executive Committee HQ for the week. A followup announcement clarified that, with new safety protocols implemented for the safety of members and volunteers, the office would be reopening on Wednesday for its usual hours of 11:00 am to 3:00 pm. A ribbon-cutting for the office, which will be open weekdays until the election, is slated for later this month.
What? No rioting, looting, or burning down innocent peoples’ businesses? Hadly befitting of a political party that “threatens democracy itself.”