The nation’s gaze has moved on from the near-assassination of Donald Trump to the coronation of Kamala Harris.

But let’s not do that, just yet.

At least not until we prove a point, to wit, that if something infamous happens in America it always has an Arizona connection.

Most Americans didn’t pay attention to a certain small detail about Donald Trump’s brush with death in Butler, Pa., but it involves our state, so we will.

Soon after Trump’s July 13 rally ended in a burst of gunfire, a mysterious white van with an Arizona license plate was spotted in a neighborhood adjacent to the fairgrounds.

Billy Thoma, one of the neighbors, told Fox News he got home a little before 5 p.m., saw a van with the Arizona plate parked on the street “and didn’t think much of it.”

Pretty soon his street was lined with police officers — roughly five to 10 patrol cars, with cops and perhaps other law enforcement types surrounding the vehicle.

When one of the cops opened the van door, “everyone jumped back,” Thoma said.

He didn’t know why, but he certainly was fearful there could be a bomb aboard. It put him a little on edge, he said.

On July 18, Fox reported that “law enforcement combed through a white van believed to have been used by Thomas Matthew Crooks,” the gunman who shot at Trump.

“Officers found explosives, including an improvised explosive device, inside the van, sources confirmed to Fox........

© Arizona Republic