Trump survived Butler. Her husband didn’t. We’re all still processing.

BUTLER, Pennsylvania — It was just after 6 a.m. on July 13, 2024, when Helen Comperatore was startled out of a deep sleep by her husband, Corey, jumping on the bed and telling her it was time to get up or they’d be late for the rally. Still groggy, Helen stubbornly buried her head in the pillow — both she and Corey had been up late the night before attending a Chris Stapleton concert, and she said she was still tired.

“Oh, not Corey, he wasn’t tired at all — he was ready to go,” she said with a smile as she recalled his antics. “He was already showered and fully dressed and ready to attend our first Trump rally.”

Silence took over as the memory of a happy moment crossed her face; the smile faded, her composure crumbled; within seconds tears formed.

She collected herself.

“He was insanely excited. I was sleeping in, and he comes crawling on top of the bed like a little kid. He’s like, ‘Honey, we got to get up. We got to get there,’” Helen recalled, lingering on the grin she can still see on her husband’s face, a man she met in kindergarten, started dating in high school and had been married to since just after he turned 21.

“When he got that look, well, he was hard to resist,” Helen said. Her smile returned.

Within short order, she said, she was showered and dressed and the family was heading to their first Trump rally ever — at the Butler Farm Show Complex, just 12 miles from their Sarver home; both places are in the county where they had spent nearly their entire lives.

Donald Trump woke up in Florida at about the same time as the Comperatores.

“The day started out great; I was really looking forward to coming to Pennsylvania to get a feel about how things were going from the locals,” Trump told me in May aboard Air Force One.

It was part of a number of conversations we had over the past year about his experience that day, and his perspective on it over time.

On that day in July, Trump was at his Mar-a-Lago home waiting for then-Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) to arrive for his final interview for the vice-president slot. Trump had grown to like Vance. The interview went well: Trump would tell me later on that he saw him as a good mix of polished Yale graduate, military veteran and White working-class kid who knew how to use all of those experiences to appeal to the different segments of the conservative populist coalition expanding around Trump’s message.

That evening would mark Trump’s first return to Butler, an out-of-the-way Pennsylvania county, since Halloween of 2020.

And that morning also began for me at 6 a.m. — actually 6:09 a.m., to be exact. It was already hot outside, without a cloud in the sky and temperatures projected to hit the mid-90s. Not ideal, I thought. I would easily be spending six hours out in the sun in Butler County along with my daughter Shannon Venditti, a photojournalist, and her husband, Michael, whom we vainly dragged along just to carry our equipment.

Despite the prospect of melting in the sun, I, too, was excited to be going to Butler — it would be the first time I would interview Trump since September 2020, when he held a rally in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. I jotted down a handful of questions in my reporter’s notebook, ripped out the page, and stuffed it in my wallet in my purse. Trump’s campaign co-chair, Chris LaCivita, had told me days before that I would have a couple of minutes with Trump before the rally, and I was going to make the best of that time.

I wasn’t nervous about interviewing the president; the thing that does make me nervous is logistics. My greatest anxiety is always, “Will I get to the event in time?” With a Trump rally, you have to factor in large crowds, parking challenges and long lines to get to the facility. My second anxiety was: “What to wear?” I needed to be comfortable but also proper. I went with a rather unorthodox choice of a skort and cowboy boots.

By 6:12 p.m., none of our lives would ever be the same.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/07/10/butler-anniversary-trump-comperatore/