Five days after being shot by a would-be assassin in Butler, Pa., former President Donald J. Trump stood onstage at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, surrounded by images of his blood-streaked face. “I will tell you exactly what happened, and you’ll never hear it from me a second time,” he said, “because it’s actually too painful to tell.”

And then he spent the next 12 weeks talking about it. He stitched the shooting into his campaign narrative about the “them” — the Democrats, the Deep State, the Marxists and the news media — trying to stop him at all costs.

On Saturday, that effort will culminate in a dramatic return to the scene of the shooting. It is a moment Mr. Trump has been hyping for weeks as a one-time-only, can’t-miss event. “We’re going back to Butler, too, by the way,” he said at a rally in Harrisburg, Pa., on July 31. “People said to me, ‘Are you serious?’ I said: ‘I’m serious. We’re going back.’”

A few days later, he told the people of Bozeman, Mont.: “We’re going back to Butler. You know that, right?”

“We’ve got to go back to Butler,” he said.

There is little precedent for what Mr. Trump is about to do. Other presidents have been shot and shot at. None have returned to the scene of the crime 12 weeks later to throw a huge campaign rally.

The moment illustrates the contradictions between Mr. Trump’s public statements about his security concerns and his private willingness to take risks. He insists on going back to Butler even as he complains that the U.S. Secret Service and the Biden administration have not properly protected him and has suggested, without evidence, that there are political motivations behind the security failures.