‘Everyone got pretty scared pretty quickly,’ says Trump shooting eyewitness

British journalist Tom Newton Dunn was at the rally when the shooting broke out.

Tom Newton Dunn: Let me just paint a quick scene for you beforehand. It was a very, very sunny, bright, very warm Pennsylvania afternoon, a little bit like the one we’re having just now, actually. And the Trump rally in Butler was extremely well attended. It was full of people who loved Donald Trump. Local people who come from nearby and quite far away. We spoke to people from Ohio, which is the next door state, not too far away from western Pennsylvania. People from Idaho had come, people from Florida even. And it was a carnival, like all Donald Trump rallies are. You’ve seen them all before. They’re a point of celebration, really, if you like. His huge amount of supporters and friends, they were hugely looking forward to seeing him.

He was late. He turned up on stage about an hour and five minutes late, and about five minutes into his speaking, the shots began and the gunman opened fire. And we had a very eerie moment of silence. First, a couple of seconds when we all tried to work out what was going on. Was it just firecrackers? Was it a stunt or something? And then a couple of seconds later someone said, ‘Get down, get down’. And I think we all realised then that this is for real. This was a really serious, serious moment, and everyone got pretty scared pretty quickly.

Jackie Long: In that initial chaos, were you sure that actually President Trump was okay?

Tom Newton Dunn: No, not in the slightest. Not in the slightest. Because I think when the ‘get down, get down’ cries began, and I think that came from law enforcement somewhere. It was obvious that this probably was a real shooter and a real shooting incident, which was terrifying. Trump stayed down for quite a period of time, or it certainly felt like that for us in the audience. He eventually got up. He was pulled to his feet by his Secret Service bodyguards.

The crowd was largely on their feet by that moment, because they also wanted to know what was going on and care desperately about him. And the rest of us also really wants to know what happened. It was when he stood up and put his arm in the air that obviously we knew he was  all right.

Jackie Long: Exactly to that point. He puts his fist in the air. He mouths this ‘fight, fight’. Obviously it was terrifying, as you say. But in that moment, what do you think was the response from the crowd?

Tom Newton Dunn: It was relief. They cheered him. This was the guy they wanted to see. Remember, this is the guy they love dearly. The Trump movement is, it’s a cultural movement more than a political party, really. It’s almost a religion, if you like. It’s an evangelical experience to go to one of these rallies and see the extraordinary adoration that happened. So they were hugely relieved he survived. And that’s when the cheer went up. But I think it took a few more seconds, maybe even a few more minutes, for people to really realise the gravity of what then just happened, and the shock and the horror of what had happened. And then it really sunk in for all of us there.