God’s not done with Donald J. Trump.  I feel that in my bones.  On July 13, I had a livestream of the president’s speech in Butler, Pennsylvania, playing in the background while I worked on something else.  When I heard an agent yell, “Down, down, down” and looked toward the screen, and realized that President Trump was on the ground and bleeding, my heart skipped a beat.  Out of habit, I dropped to my knees and began praying for his life and the life of our country — so inextricably interwoven both seemed to be in that moment.

As I started scrambling for information and turned on as many newsfeeds as possible, my attention was drawn to those comment sections and internet forums where people were reacting in real time.  “Lord, please save this man.”  “God help President Trump and those around him.”  “Jesus, we need You now.”  “Please, God, please.”  There were prayers coming from everywhere.  I stopped searching for updates and just started reading what people from all over the world were saying.  Countless Americans and non-Americans (dare I guess tens or even hundreds of millions?) were begging the Almighty to intervene on Trump’s behalf in those startling first few minutes.  It was a spiritually sublime event to witness.

What can you say about such a near miss, when a bullet tracking toward the back of President Trump’s skull instead tore through his upper ear?  But for his unexpected head-turn in the direction of a big-screen monitor over his right shoulder, July 13, 2024, would be remembered very differently.  And in that nerve-racking instant — when time slowed down and we could see blood streaked across Trump’s face — there was a panicked realization among strangers around the world of how important it is that this man live.  The unending stream of online prayers reflected a global awareness that his fate and our fates are right now linked.  It was enough to give a person goosebumps.

I have never been entirely comfortable praising President Trump as much as I do.  It’s not because I’m secretly one of those people who feels compelled to list the man’s alleged shortcomings before giving him a compliment.  We’re all sinners in this world, and most observers who preface their admiration for Donald Trump with some kind of boilerplate language regarding his personality or past behavior sound more like virtue-signaling preeners to me.  Instead, my hesitancy comes from a general wariness with glorifying any man or woman walking among us as something more than a mere mortal struggling against sin and evil in this world just as the rest of us do.  A perfect soul has not trekked on earthly soil for two thousand years, and to pretend otherwise helps no one.

But I do believe God has a plan for all of us.  I have witnessed His miracles when all seemed lost.  I have followed His voice on more than one occasion to find comfort where I expected none.  And I think President Trump must hear His voice, too.  

I look at this man suffering blow after blow who refuses to give up.  The news media call him a rapist, a Nazi, and a criminal.  Donald Trump ignores them.  The federal government spies on his campaign, frames him as a Russian spy, keeps him tied up with special counsel investigations, encourages Antifa terrorists to threaten his physical safety, impeaches him twice, brands him an insurrectionist, and charges him with enough felonies to put him in prison for the rest of his life.  Donald Trump doesn’t care.  

The Democrat party demonizes him as a dictator and evil incarnate.  The Republican Establishment insists that he is unfit to hold office and a threat to America’s standing with the rest of the world.  The vast administrative state that controls D.C. claims that his economic policies hurt families and that his foreign policies endanger national security.  The open-border advocates for illegal immigration and the race-baiting opportunists in the perpetually offended grievance industry slander him as a racist and a closet member of the KKK.  Donald Trump doesn’t get mad; he doesn’t lose his temper; he doesn’t get discouraged.  

A gunman comes within millimeters of taking his life.  Blood drips down his face.  President Trump rises from the ground with a clenched fist held high and yells, “Fight, fight, fight.”  This is a man of uncommon strength.

Old Guard Republicans such as Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have spent the last decade telling voters that President Trump is a fraud unworthy of the American people’s support.  They have portrayed him as a coward, a petty villain, and a hypocrite.  They have warned over and over that Donald Trump cannot be trusted to keep his word.  These two backstabbing peacocks have been wrong every step of the way.

A fraud doesn’t leave a luxuriously comfortable life to hang out with the rats in D.C.  A coward doesn’t endure insults and malicious prosecutions when retirement from politics would be the easy thing to do.  A villain doesn’t work so hard to put “America First” when Wall Street globalists and bloodthirsty war hawks offer great bribes to politicians who put America last.  A hypocrite doesn’t keep a whiteboard in the White House filled with policy agenda items that must be accomplished before they land on the list labeled “Promises Made / Promises Kept.”  

For the four years of Donald Trump’s presidency, Republican voters finally had a Republican president willing to keep his word.  They had a leader willing to withstand media and Establishment attacks without wilting.  They had a man willing to look out for the forgotten men and women in America whom the corrupt sleazeballs of the D.C. swamp had long ago sold out.  For once, they had a fighter with a real spine.  It made all the difference.

All I know is that a man’s character is revealed when he’s tested, and President Trump has been tested time and again ever since he first descended that golden escalator in Trump Tower and upset the ruling Uniparty’s rot-filled applecart.  Most people alive today have never seen a national leader under such relentless fire from unethical prosecutors, partisan judges, corrupt FBI and national security officials, corporate oligarchs, and news media propagandists.  Most people would understand if President Trump threw up his hands and simply gave up.  

It’s what Romney-Ryan-type invertebrates would do.  Mitt Romney couldn’t even defend himself from CNN debate moderator Candy Crowley when she stepped in to save Barack Obama’s bacon.  Do you think that guy would stand in the breach and fight for working-class Americans if doing so meant that the Deep State would confiscate his wealth and threaten his freedom?  Not a chance.  Do you think he would have the mental fortitude and moral courage to raise a bloody fist in defiance of a gunman seeking to take his life?  Hell no.  Mitt Romney would have crawled to safety and looked for the first warm body to shield him from the next bullet. 

Romney-Ryan cowardice is why the Republican Party has been called the Stupid Party or the Sell-Out Party for forty years.  RINO indifference to the problems of ordinary Americans and weak-willed Republicans’ readiness to betray America for the perks and privileges of the globalist new world order are why President Trump’s leadership has been so jarringly refreshing.

When I watched Donald Trump survive Saturday’s assassination attempt and rise to his feet with vim and vigor and determination, I knew in my heart that he remains an indispensable and irreplaceable man of action.  I knew that I was watching someone essential to America’s future.  And millions of worried people all over the world thought the same thing.  So together, we prayed.

Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.