Speakers and delegates at the Republic National Convention in Milwaukee have repeatedly said that divine intervention was God’s way of showing American voters that former president Donald Trump, and not current president Joe Biden, is the right man to occupy The White House from 2025.
One of those speakers was then President Trump’s former press secretary and now Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders who said from the platform that “not even an assassin’s bullet could stop” the former president. “God spared President Trump from that assassin because God is not finished with him yet,” she said to raucous applause, adding: “And He most certainly is not finished with America yet, either. With God as our guide and President Trump back in The White House we’ll show the world that America’s the place where freedom reigns and liberty will never die.”
Texas Governor Greg Abbott posted “Trump is truly blessed.” Texas state representative Dustin Burrows wrote he is “thankful to God for protecting” the Republican presidential nominee. Florida Representative Byron Donalds said he told Mr. Trump the “hand of God is protecting him.”
Retired neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson who ran against Mr. Trump in the 2016 GOP primary and served as his Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, quoted from the Book of Isaiah during his address to the convention while expressing his belief that his former boss was supernaturally protected, saying: “My thoughts immediately turned to the verse that says: No weapon formed against you shall prosper!”
“I have no doubt that God lowered a shield of protection over President Trump, and I join millions of Americans in thanksgiving for President Trump’s safety. And I encourage you to join me in praying each day for his continued protection,” Dr. Carson appealed.
He closed his speech by referencing French political theorist Alexis de Tocqueville’s observations on American society in the 19th century, and how it relates to the present. Despite being “duly impressed” by the American government, entrepreneurship, and high literacy, Dr. Carson noted that de Tocqueville was most impressed by American faith and morality. “He heard those inspirational sermons from the pulpits that inspired a ragtag bunch of militiamen to defeat the most powerful army in the world and gave the American people a moral face,” he said to rapturous applause.
Conservative political commentator Tucker Carlson, a lifelong Episcopalian, believes the attempted assassination is proof of a “spiritual attack underway” in the United States. He told a Heritage Foundation event in Milwaukee: “There is no logical way to understand what we’re seeing now in temporal terms; you just can’t. These are not political divides. There are forces — and they’re very obvious now, they’ve decided, for whatever reason, to take off the mask — whose only goal is chaos, violence, destruction.”
When the Reuters news agency interviewed 18 convention delegates this week, all but two believed God had a hand in Donald Trump’s escape from assassination. “To me, it was God-given protection,” said Sharon D. Regan, a Trump delegate from Florida. “It was miraculous. It was sent by heaven and I pray that protection continues.”
Ray Myers, a Texas delegate, said: “There’s some kind of mystical thing going on. After everything he’s been through, everything that’s been thrown at him, and now he’s even shed his own blood. And he’s still here. I don’t know how else you can explain it, but God is involved.”
Mr. Trump himself cast his narrow escape as the work of God: “It was God alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening,” he posted on social media. Melanie Collette, a New Jersey delegate, said there was a strong belief at the convention that “God interceded” to save Trump. But she cautioned: “We certainly don’t want to deify Donald Trump. That’s a cautionary tale for Christians.”
Tragically, there was one fatality during the shooting at the Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Devout Christian Corey Comperatore, a volunteer firefighter from Butler, died protecting his wife and daughter from gunfire. His widow Helen told The New York Times Mr. Trump reached out to her directly. She said he “was very kind and said he would continue to call me in the days and weeks ahead,” adding that her husband “left this world a hero, and God welcomed him in.”
