Timothy L. O’Brien: “Divine intervention” discourse post-Trump shooting
Donald Trump narrowly escaped injury at a Pennsylvania rally when a bullet pierced his ear. Trump credited divine intervention and law enforcement for his survival. This incident sparked claims of "divine intervention" among GOP politicians and supporters, despite Trump's historically secular persona and controversial past.
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By Timothy L. O'Brien
The bullet a shooter fired at Donald Trump at a Pennsylvania rally last Saturday fortunately missed its mark, piercing the former president's ear instead of doing greater and graver damage. ___STEADY_PAYWALL___
Circumstance played a role in sparing Trump. His assailant was reportedly a bad shot, and Trump turned his head away from the bullet soon before it reached him. Trump also thanked law enforcement and first responders for protecting him (though security lapses at the rally are being examined).
By the morning after the shooting, Trump had added the almighty to his list of guardians. "It was God alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening," he said in a post on his social media site. That followed an image he shared, courtesy of his daughter-in-law, featuring Jesus Christ placing his hands protectively on the Republican candidate's shoulders.
Since then, "divine intervention" has become a talking point for GOP politicians, Trump family members and other supporters here in Milwaukee, where the Republican National Convention is underway.
Senator Bill Hagerty of Tennessee invoked the term during a meeting with me and others at a Bloomberg News roundtable. "It is by the grace of God and a millimeter that he is still with us," the senator said. Trump's son Eric also cited "divine intervention" in his father's ordeal at a separate forum here. He noted that "somebody was looking down" on his father, who, he said, has been transformed into a "new persona" and now ranks alongside Abraham Lincoln as a presidential star. The great awakening has even gone global. The International Society for Krishna Consciousness said "divine intervention" through "the Lord Jagannath" saved Trump.
This has all taken a turn toward the curious. Trump has never been particularly spiritual or religiously observant. He did tell me almost 20 years ago, as we drove together to his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf course, that he believes in God.
"There has to be a reason we are here. What are we doing? You know there is an expression: 'Life is what you do while you're waiting to die,'" he told me. "There has to be a reason that we're going through this. There has to be a reason for everything. I do believe in God. I think there just has to be something that's far greater than us."
But beyond hoping for life everlasting, and possibly seeing heaven as an insurance policy, there isn't a lot of other evidence suggesting that Trump walks a Christian road in the here and now. It's certainly possible that Trump, a twice-impeached convicted felon and sexual predator, has seen the light. Maybe his brutal and unsettling brush with an assassin's bullet has, indeed, changed him.
I have my doubts, though.
Although Trump has referred to himself, while standing on the White House lawn, as "the chosen one," he has been self-absorbed, self-deluded and wildly self-aggrandizing for most of his 78 years. He's never been much of a traditional churchgoer or Bible-reader, but he did grow up in a family that embraced Norman Vincent Peale's controversial "prosperity gospel" — a quasi-spiritual manifesto that emphasized the accumulation of personal happiness and wealth. In his adult life, he has aligned himself with churches or ministers touting the same dollar-based values. Although Trump had never been involved in traditional Christian churches (many of which look askance at the prosperity gospel), white evangelicals have been reliable political supporters.
Trump has others in his corner, too. Wayne Allyn Root, a conservative extremist, conspiracy theorist and self-described "capitalist evangelist" who believes Jesus was the "CEO of the Christian religion," has described Trump as the "second coming of God."
I don't know. If you accept love and forgiveness as basic tenets among authentic adherents of Christianity, Trump really isn't even close. He has routinely trafficked in intolerance and racism, has been notoriously tightfisted, dodgy and unlawful when it comes to charitable giving, and has often put his own interests ahead of the American public. Mother Teresa he isn't.
I don't doubt that many of Trump's supporters are people of faith who truly see the hand of God at work. I also don't doubt that Trump and many of his enablers transform into avid holy rollers when it suits their needs. And I suspect that all of them will dismiss this column as just another jaded rant.
"None of us, however spiritual, can know God's will, nor change it," a conservative advocacy group called the Association of Mature American Citizens observed after the shooting. "Yet cynics, like those of faith, ought not to dismiss the patterns of life, history, and where miraculous events often lead. For those with no inclination to history, miracles, faith, or divine intervention — no patience for those who see the Hand of Providence in American history — so be it."
Go ahead, call me a cynic. But the sudden flurry of observations that "divine intervention" is at work in Trump's life during this perilous and consequential election year is raw opportunism — and sure feels like a handy and manipulative collection of political talking points.
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