My wife and I were watching former President Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, when there was an attempt upon his life. 

That we were even watching a Trump rally on a Saturday afternoon in California was odd for us -- we often watch the news together in the evenings, but rarely do we ever watch televised rallies in the daytime. 

And this particular Trump rally began in very typical fashion.  It was boilerplate stuff about the Biden administration having reversed his successful immigration enforcement platform.  All true, of course, but fairly typical.

My wife and I exchanged two comments in the early part of the rally coverage.  My wife pointed out that there was a child with a suit, red tie, a Trump wig, and MAGA hat sitting behind Trump, and we both chuckled at that.  Then, after Trump playfully teased the audience about the Republican Senate candidate speaking later, I mentioned to my wife how awestruck I am by his genuine nature -- he really, really loves this stuff.  Biden can’t wait to get off stage, and there are millions of people who would push him off the stage if they could, but Trump genuinely loves his audience, craves its feedback, and continually proves to me that he's an amazingly skilled presenter and showman.

Then, something uncommon happened.  He asked his tech crew if they could pull up a chart that reflected the rate of illegal immigration during the Trump presidency versus the rate of illegal immigration during the Biden presidency. 

I suspect that his team knew he would ask for the image, though he praised his team’s skill in presenting the image.  My last comment to my wife, before shots were fired, was about the fact that Fox News was so unprepared they couldn’t bring cameras to the image that Trump was referencing.

At this moment, Trump cocks his head forward and to his right, toward his speaking material, and says:

You know, that’s a little bit old, that chart’s a couple of months old. If you wanna really see something that’s sad, take a look at what happened… [shots fired, Trump reaches for his right ear which was shot by the gunman]

There will be much speculation in the weeks to come, I’m sure.  But what I can say is that not even Fox News knew that Trump would happen to cock his head to the right in looking at that chart that his team presented to rallygoers.  If they did, they would have had a plan to include the visual into its coverage.

The bullet, according to Trump, hit the upper part of his right ear.  But if he had not been leaning forward, looking toward an impromptu image at his right, we should fully expect that these bullets would have killed the expected Republican presidential nominee in 2024.

There is a fascinating picture which captures the moment that an assassin’s bullet almost kills our next president.

It seems difficult to me to claim any of these details as happenstance.  It seems far more plausible that this was Providence.

Image: Screen shot from CSPAN video, via YouTube