Not since Theodore Roosevelt has a president or presidential candidate provided such an image of strength and toughness as former President Donald Trump did on Saturday, mere seconds after a bullet fired by a would-be assassin skimmed his ear.

With blood streaming from his ear and Secret Service agents all around him, Trump pushed himself back into the view of the crowd that had come to see him in Butler, Pennsylvania, and raised his fist in a gesture of strength and defiant perseverance. Similar to Roosevelt insisting on delivering a speech moments after being shot in 1912, the image of Trump’s defiant fist is one that will go down as a defining moment in the history of the United States.