MILWAUKEE — Former President Donald Trump will speak Thursday to a Republican crowd that increasingly views him in a messianic light.
His escape from an assassination attempt has convinced many at the Republican National Convention, and in the party at large, that God had a direct hand in preserving his life.
“God almighty intervened because America is one nation under God, and he is certainly not finished with President Trump,” Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders said on the convention stage.
“If you didn’t believe in miracles before Saturday, you’d better be believing right now,” Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina told the crowd in his speech. “And our God, our God still saves, he still delivers, and he still sets free because on Saturday the devil came to Pennsylvania holding a rifle, but an American lion got back up on his feet, and he roared!”
Nods and “Amens” came from the audience in the arena.
For Mr. Trump, whose most robust base of voters has been evangelical Christians, his near-death experience is the stuff of fate.
“I think people feel he is a man of destiny, that he was spared for a reason, and you hear that from delegates and alternatives at the convention,” said Josh McKoon, chair of the Georgia Republican Party. “I’m hearing it from people all over the country.”
The sentiment is a part of the broader “feedback loop of love” for Mr. Trump, which has defined every aspect of the convention.
Mr. Trump has been in the hall for much of it — a rarity for a nominee at a convention — and he is soaking it up.
On Monday, he entered the arena with a bandaged ear a little more than 48 hours after the gunman sent eight rounds toward him on the stage at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania. A last-moment twist of Mr. Trump’s head resulted in one round grazing his ear, averting a potential kill shot through his skull.
Some delegates are wearing mock bandages to show support.
“It’s totally in sympathy and in respect and in honor of Donald J. Trump. The man almost gave his life for us and for our country,” said Joe Neglia, a delegate from Arizona. “We need to respect that and honor it as much as we possibly can. This is the least that I could do.”
For Democrats, the adulation fuels their complaints that the Republican Party has become a cult of personality. Some Republicans worry about outsized expectations for Mr. Trump’s political accomplishments.
Past presidential candidates also have flirted with deification.
Barack Obama spoke to his nominating convention at a football stadium in Denver in 2008 on a stage designed to make him look like a Greek god. The adulation for Mr. Obama was so overwhelming that his Republican opponent, John McCain, produced a commercial, “The One,” transposing images of Mr. Obama bodysurfing with Moses parting the sea.
Mr. Trump has harnessed the savior imagery dating back to his 2016 convention speech when he declared “I alone” could fix what ailed the nation.
Surviving an assassination attempt by millimeters turns up the dial for Republicans.
Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson told The Washington Times on Wednesday that he saw divine intervention in Mr. Trump’s survival.
“Absolutely no question about it,” he said. “I mean, that was an easy shot, and for him to turn his head at just that exact time and for it to miss by that small amount. Some people say it’s just a coincidence, but I don’t think so — not at all.
“When I saw it, I thought that God intervened because think of the turmoil we would be in if it had been successful,” he said.
Mr. Carson likened the story of “Bulletproof George Washington” that played out after British troops and American officers were slaughtered during the battle of the Battle of Monongahela during the French and Indian War.
“Washington had two horses shot out from underneath him. He had four bullet holes on his coat and bullet fragments in his hair, but no flesh wounds,” he said. The battle played out in modern-day Pittsburgh, less than 50 miles from Butler, where Mr. Trump was shot.
Mr. Trump also credited God’s work. On Sunday, the eve of his formal nomination as the Republican candidate, he wrote on his Truth Social platform that “it was God alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening.”
Beyond the convention hall, analysts say, Mr. Trump was already riding unfathomable levels of enthusiasm from his base, angered over what they see as eight years of persecution of their champion.
The assassination attempt only deepened that devotion.
“You’re seeing an energy and enthusiasm associated with that that is real,” Mr. McKoon said. “I’ve never seen people just so activated and energized about a political candidate in my lifetime.”
• Seth McLaughlin can be reached at smclaughlin@washingtontimes.com.
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