Former president will appear with ‘quadruple’ the security, and also honor firefighter killed during shooting

Donald Trump plans to return on Saturday to the site where a gunman tried to assassinate him in July, as the former president sets aside what are now near-constant worries for his physical safety in order to fulfill a promise – “really an obligation”, he said recently – to the people of Butler, Pennsylvania.

“I’ll probably start off by saying, ‘As I was saying ... ’,” the Republican presidential nominee has joked, in a bit of black humor about a speech cut short when a bullet struck Trump’s ear and he was whisked off stage – fist aloft – with blood dripping across his face.