As Americans wonder how and why Thomas Crooks managed to get an assault rifle onto one of the few roofs around the Butler Farm Showgrounds on Saturday, one group has seen an undeniable miracle that has revealed an irrefutable truth: God reached down and saved Donald Trump because Trump is God’s chosen politician.
By Sunday morning, the evangelical American right was codifying the failed assassination as a religious event.
Franklin Graham, son of Billy, proclaimed that it was “obvious that God’s hand of protection was on him”. Marco Rubio insisted that “God protected Donald Trump”.
On social media, thousands of posts explained how the attack had been prophesied in the bible, or posted AI-generated images of Trump being enfolded in angel wings or embraced by Jesus (or a young Kris Kristofferson — it was sometimes hard to tell).
Even slightly more secular Americans echoed those sentiments, though Nancy Pelosi’s message on Twitter — “I thank God that former President Trump is safe” — was, I suspect, less a giving of thanks than a subtle lesson in manners to the man who turned the attempted assassination of Pelosi’s husband into a joke at one of his rallies.
Trump himself leant heavily into the biblical rhetoric, posting on Truth Social that “it was God alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening” and that “we will FEAR NOT, but instead remain resilient in our Faith and Defiant in the face of Wickedness.”
There is plenty to say about the US’s slide towards theocracy, though I’m not sure how much actual theology will feature in the coming years: Christian nationalism is a political rather than religious movement, and it is actively working to transform Jesus of Nazareth into the smallest, nastiest version of humanity it can imagine.
Still, there will be time for those discussions. Rather, what struck me this week, amid the outpouring of relief, thanksgiving and faith, was the sinister calculus of the miracle being claimed in Pennsylvania, and what it said about us and our relationship with power.
In his Truth Social post, Trump sent condolences to the family of Corey Comperatore, the man who was killed while shielding his family from Crooks’ bullets, but despite widespread reporting on his death the overwhelming majority of the posts I saw focused entirely on the miracle that Trump had been saved.
Mpofu may ask 'so what?', but the rest of us are asking 'so what now?' and coming up short
For those who believe in an all-powerful God, the equation was clear: God could have turned the assassin’s bullets into water drops or dandelions, but instead He guided them past Trump and into the stands. In other words, Comperatore’s death was part of God’s plan and from there it’s a very short leap of logic to believing that someone had to die so that Trump could live.
It’s an evil idea, but I think it comes from a deep-rooted belief that exists in faithful and secular alike, that on some level we are expendable props in the important, elect lives of our leaders. Even our proudly secular media here at home does it all the time, referring to us as “ordinary South Africans”, thereby implying that politicians are extraordinary.
Certainly, that wicked prejudice seemed to be on full display here over the weekend, as Dali Mpofu went on television to deny his own televised denial that the EFF had received “donations” from the plundered VBS Mutual Bank.
At first, the waffling and backtracking seemed to imply someone trying to avoid admitting to or apologising for anything, in other words, someone who felt guilty about something. But then came the truth.
All political parties receive donations, he said, and even though the EFF hadn’t been paid a donation to stop criticising VBS’s support of Jacob Zuma, if it had, “so what?”
So what, indeed? So what if the lives of elderly pensioners were destroyed? Couldn’t they understand that the forced sacrifice of a few thousand elderly people allowed the EFF’s leadership cabal to buy and wear designer goodies that inspired over a million? Didn’t they realise that sometimes ordinary people need to have their lives wrecked so that extraordinary people can pay lawyers to tell the ordinary people “so what?”
Mpofu may ask “so what?”, but the rest of us are asking “so what now?” and coming up short.
In the US, Christian nationalists have spent the last few years debating whether they would accept a Trump defeat in November this year. After Saturday, such a prospect clearly goes against the publicly enacted will of God.
In the unlikely event that Trump loses, whether to Joe Biden and an expert taxidermist and puppeteer, or three Democrat interns dressed in a trench coat wearing a rubber mask of Barack Obama, a large proportion of Christian nationalists will now believe that it is their God-given duty to resist or remove that president from power. Only time will tell whether they will base their strategy on the old testament or the new.
As for the EFF, they’ll keep libelling journalists and shrieking on Twitter, but between the current fiasco and them being completely overshadowed by Zuma’s new party, their time seems to be running out.
Still, when things are this fluid, perhaps it’s wise to leave the last word to Andrew Walker, a professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, who was asked by Politico about God’s involvement in Trump’s escape.
“Providence,” he replied, “is best understood in the rear-view mirror.”
Amen to that.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.