God’s Strongman
A near assassination encourages the belief that Trump is holy.
The blood had barely dried in Butler, Pennsylvania, when the images appeared. In them, Donald Trump is surrounded by the Secret Service and framed by the American flag. He pumped his fist, the triumphant gesture of a survivor. “Fight! Fight! Fight!” he urged the crowd as agents rushed him from the scene of his near killing. To his supporters, he looked stronger than ever — even anointed by God. Many Trump voters already saw God’s providence in him. After Saturday’s shooting, they believe they have proof.
“GOD protected President Trump yesterday,” House Speaker Mike Johnson claimed in a tweet before comparing the shooting to George Washington’s “miraculous” survival after a “gunfire ambush.” Steve Bannon said that Trump “wears the armor of God.” The Evangelical minister Franklin Graham told Fox News that “God’s hand of protection” was on Trump. The former president “is truly blessed,” tweeted Governor Greg Abbott of Texas. A reasonable person might wonder why God blessed Trump and not the children of Uvalde in Abbott’s own state. Abbott’s God appears selective, even cruel. Trump’s purpose is to live; the children’s, to die. But then Trump is special, at least to the right.
It’s well established by now that much of Trump’s appeal rests on his image as a strongman. His aggressive masculinity makes him the ultimate national patriarch, in the Old Testament sense of the word. To his followers, Trump has been a modern Cyrus, the embodiment of a Persian king who conquered Babylon and allowed the Jewish people to return to what is now Israel from their captivity abroad. Though Cyrus was not Jewish, God worked through him to deliver the Jewish people. “America’s going to have a challenge either way,” Lance Wallnau, a prominent Evangelical, said in 2016. “With Trump, I believe we have a Cyrus to navigate through the storm.” As Vox reported in 2018, the story of Cyrus allowed conservative Christian leaders “to develop a ‘vessel theology’ around Donald Trump, one that allows them to reconcile his personal history of womanizing and alleged sexual assault with what they see as his divinely ordained purpose to restore a Christian America.”
Trump is not a mere strongman, then, but a biblical figure sent by God. Denison University professor Paul Djupe “has conducted polls showing that one-third of believers in modern-day prophecy endorse the idea that Trump is anointed by God to be president,” The Nation reported earlier this year. “More than half of prophecy believers, and 20 percent of respondents overall, supported Wallnau’s call for the evangelical takeover of all the leading cultural institutions.” Trump’s Evangelical supporters now speak, often, of spiritual warfare, pitting demonic Trump critics against the former president, who represents the power of God. On the popular FlashPoint TV show, Nebraska preacher Hank Kunneman described criminal charges against Trump as “a battle between good and evil” and added, “There’s something on President Trump that the enemy fears: It’s called the anointing.” Wallnau said that “the hand of God is on him and he cannot be stopped.”
In a video released after the attempt on Trump’s life, Wallnau spoke of a new “decree” from Chuck Pierce, a popular author and self-proclaimed apostle. “Lord, we decree that he will have an ear to hear in every key situation what the Spirit is saying,” he said, quoting Pierce. “Whether to turn to the left, or turn to the right, we declare wisdom like David and he will stay one step ahead of death at every turn.” The myth is already in motion, propelled not just by Trump supporters but by members of the Trump family and by Trump himself. Trump claimed in a fundraising email that “it was God alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening.” (Not so for Corey Comperatore, who was shot in the head while protecting his family in the grandstands.) On Instagram, Lara Trump posted an image of a ghostly Jesus hovering behind her father-in-law. “Fear not, for I am with you,” she wrote in a caption pulled from the book of Isaiah.
Saturday’s shooting injured Trump’s ear, but not his image. To his most committed supporters, he may be more than a vessel now. He is a miracle, a prophet, a warrior, and God’s hand is on him, if not the rest of us. “I’m just praying that in that second term, that that Holy Ghost fire will get ahold of him, and we’re going to see something great happen,” Pastor Tony Suarez of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference said at a FlashPoint taping earlier this year. Should Trump win reelection, it will be seen as another blessing from God. What is providence to the right is a disaster for everyone else.