‘Living through history’: Grand Strand, Pee Dee officials react to Trump assassination attempt

HORRY COUNTY, S.C. (WBTW) — People across the country, Grand Strand and Pee Dee are in shock after an assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump on Saturday in Butler, Pennsylvania.

“My first reaction was shock and disbelief,” Horry County GOP Chairman Reese Boyd said. “It’s like, you saw something with your own eyes, you realize it just happened, but it just takes you a while to process what you just saw and to realize that it really did occur.”

On Saturday, Trump spoke for about five minutes during a rally in Pennsylvania before gunfire erupted.

“Talk about living through history,” Boyd said. “This is a week that people will be writing about and talking about for generations.”

Boyd said how Republicans and Democrats react in the coming weeks will be telling.

Dr. David White, a political science professor at Francis Marion University, said the U.S. is politically polarized, and Americans are concerned right now.

“Republicans are rallying around the former president. I want to say it’s bad news for Joe Biden, electorally speaking, because his core supporters were always going to be enthused,” White said. “But now, they even have more enthusiasm and they feel like they’re being attacked, they’re being minimized.”

White said the recent incident may benefit Trump. He said in political science, they have something called the “flag effect,” and it usually deals with the nation being attacked.

“Everybody rallies around and the president gets a bump in his public approval,” he said. “I think there’s sort of a similarity that I think Trump will benefit from this. I don’t know if it’ll be long lasting.”

With that, White said the assassination attempt will be a topic of conversation in his classroom.

“For the students I have now, it’s always something that happens in another place, or happened when they were young,” he said. “So, now, this is real life for them.”

The presidential election is on Tuesday, Nov. 5. Early voting will start on Oct. 21 and end on Nov. 2.

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Gracie is a multimedia journalist at News 13 and is from Cleveland, Ohio. Gracie joined the team in June 2023 after graduating from the University of Alabama in May. Follow Gracie on Facebook , Instagram and X, formerly Twitter, & read more of her work here .

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