Was Donald Trump’s survival an act of God? In the wake of the shocking assassination attempt on the former president in Pennsylvania Saturday evening, many prominent Republicans — and even a shortlister for Trump’s vice president — are crediting divine intervention for saving Trump’s life.
Florida Senator Marco Rubio, widely regarded as a potential 2024 veep choice, posted on X for example: “God protected President Trump.”
Trump — despite his sinful history as a thrice married felon who paid off a porn star and has been held civilly responsible for sexual abuse — is seen, paradoxically, among many in the MAGA base as a flawed actor that the Christian God is using to divine ends in American politics.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, himself a zealot who has compared his role in government to Moses, declared on X that “God protected Trump.” Johnson claimed the intervention was “just” like how God had once “miraculously protected” George Washington from a gunfire during an ambush in Pennsylvania in 1755.
Dan Patrick, the Lt. Gov. of Texas, had gotten the God-saved-Trump ball rolling just an hour or so after the shooting near Butler, Pennsylvania. Patrick is a far-right lawmaker and key player in billionaire Tim Dunn’s Christian nationalist takeover in Lone Star politics.
In a post on X, Patrick shared a text he said he sent to Trump: “By the slightest turn of your head in a mere microsecond, or the shield of a teleprompter, your life was spared by the Grace of a Merciful and Holy God,” Patrick wrote. He returned to a thought he said he’d shared with Trump on a recent plane flight: “God has had his hand on you since you first ran for President,” Patrick texted. “No man could survive all you have been through without the Grace of God.”
For his part, Dr. Ben Carson, a former Trump cabinet member, posted that the Trump assassination attempt was just the latest in a series of trials that God will set right: “They tried to bankrupt him. They tried to slander him. They tried to imprison him. Now they have tried to kill him, but if God is protecting him, they will never succeed.”
Carson added in a statement that he believes “with all my heart” that Trump is being protected by God as part of a larger design for the country. “Trump is called for this moment in history,” Carson wrote, adding that “God is not done with our country.”
That post was shared widely, including by Christian nationalist Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA, who insisted that Carson was “100% right.” In another post, Kirk suggested a “gust of wind” may have “pushed that bullet ever so slightly.” Kirk added that “the Holy Spirit in scripture is often associated with a gust of wind.” And he insisted, “God’s hand is on Donald Trump.”
The Christian nationalist evangelist Lance Wallnau helped popularize the notion that Trump is a modern-day Cyrus, an old testament pagan king whom God used for divine purposes. Appearing on the far-right religious broadcast Flashpoint, Wallnau said that a nicking of Trump’s ear, instead of a deadly wound, proved that God is “ruling in the details.”
By Sunday, Trump himself was getting behind the idea that Providence had protected his life. Posting on Truth Social, Trump expressed his gratitude for the nation’s “thoughts and prayers,” because, he wrote, it was “God alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening.”
The post continued in language more typical of a brimstone preacher than the bombastic former president: “We will FEAR NOT, but instead remain resilient in our Faith and Defiant in the face of Wickedness,” it said, adding that Americans should be united in not allowing “Evil to Win.”
The poor marksmanship of a 20-year-old shooter, who reportedly was barred from his high school rifle club and may have been rushed by a local cop trying to stop his rampage, is a more likely explanation for why the shots on Trump lacked accuracy.
The notion of divine intervention itself raises uncomfortable questions — including why a just deity would allow a local former fire department leader to perish in the same attack, while shielding his wife and daughter. Or why such a God, for example, didn’t spare the school children of Uvalde from a similar deadly shooter with an AR-15.
But such qualms did not appear to trouble MAGA stalwarts, whose blind faith in the righteousness of far-right American politics continues to rival, if not trump, any genuine faith in Jesus.
