By Joan McCarter
Daily Kos Staff
Last month, the Supreme Court effectively declared Donald Trump would be king if he were reelected. Now the GOP is taking the next step: In the wake of this past Saturday’s assassination attempt on Trump, the party is all but claiming he has a divine right to the position.
“I told [Trump] that last night. I said, ‘Sir, the hand of God is on you,’” Florida Rep. Byron Donalds said at a Milwaukee town hall on Tuesday.
“Trump came very close to having his brains spread over that platform but God, I believe, protected him,” Rev. Franklin Graham, the son of famous pastor Billy Graham, said during a speech at the Republican National Convention on Tuesday night. “Maybe that’s one reason God saved his life,” Graham added. “I hope Trump understands that it’s not about him making America great again, it’s God making America great again.”
Trump himself is doing his best to stoke this rhetoric.
“[I]t was God alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post the day after the shooting. “We will FEAR NOT, but instead remain resilient in our Faith and Defiant in the face of Wickedness.” (As if.)
“God was with me,” he told a group at the RNC. “In many ways, it changes your attitude, your viewpoint, toward life. I think you appreciate God even more.”
In the longest acceptance speech in history Thursday, Trump returned to the theme. “I stand before you in this arena only by the grace of almighty God,” he said. “Many people say it was a providential moment.”
Trump’s elected minions are happy to amplify that message as well, declaring Trump as God’s chosen one. Here’s GOP Sen. Roger Marshall, from Kansas saying that everyone would now unify behind Trump because “Donald Trump is indeed the person. This assassination attempt—it was divine intervention."
It’s safe to assume that the God all of these Republicans are talking about is the white Christian nationalist one they have molded from the Old Testament, not the “love thy neighbor” incarnation in the son of God.
It’s the logical progression for a party—and a Supreme Court majority—rocketing back to the Middle Ages.
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