A week ago Blake Marnell was less than 10 yards from Donald Trump when an assassin’s bullet sliced through his ear.
On Saturday, he put on his brick-wall style suit and lined up at 5am to make sure he was in the front row again for the former president’s first rally since coming within less than an inch of being killed.
‘One of the messages that President Trump put out after what happened in Butler was a message that could best be characterized by two words: Fear not,’ he said.
Beside him the ‘Front Row Joes’ were taking their seats in the Van Andel Arena, Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Two days earlier, Trump had accepted the official nomination to be the Republican candidate in November’s election.
Michigan is one of the key swing states that could decide the outcome. Trump won it by a little more than 10,000 votes in 2016, but Joe Biden flipped it four years later.
Worries about security had put no one off coming to see Trump and his newly installed running mate Sen. J.D. Vance.
Thousands of people lined up outside long before the gates opened.
Marnell, who has been to more than 40 rallies, was at the Republican Party’s convention across Lake Michigan in Milwaukee as a delegate for California.
‘I wasn’t gonna go back to my home state and just go on with my life there as if it were a normal Saturday knowing that this historic rally—not just after the attempt on the president’s life—but really the kickoff with his new running mate of JD Vance,’ he said.
‘I just felt it was like an important one for me to be at.’
A week ago he was ducking at the sound of gunshots, close enough to hear Secret Service agents sending and receiving instructions about protecting the former president and then moving him off stage.
And he was among the supporters who cheered as Trump stood and raised his fist in a defiant salute.
Alongside him was another ‘Front Row Joe’ in her red, white, and blue baseball-style jersey, emblazoned with ‘Trump 45’ on the back.
‘I can’t talk about it again,’ she said. ‘It’s too painful.’
But she was there in her usual seat anyway.
Rick Lane was also in the front row at the Butler rally.
‘Nothing would stop me being here,’ said the 55-year-old, wearing one of the ‘I bleed red, white and Trump’ T-shirts produced by his apparel company.
‘We saw the hand of God protecting the president last week and I feel safe being here because that hands protects all of us here.’
Trump addressed the shooting in his convention speech, describing in vivid detail the moment he was shot.
He struck a conciliatory tone during the early, scripted part of his remarks.
‘I am running to be president for all of America, not half of America, because there is no victory in winning for half of America,’ he said Thursday
But he quickly veered off course and delivered the longest convention speech in modern history, delivering a selection of greatest hits from his rally appearances over the course of 92 minutes.