'Truly providential': Trump made promise to Marc Fogel's mother moments before Butler assassination attempt
President Donald Trump met with Marc Fogel's mother on July 13, 2024, in Butler, Pennsylvania, and vowed to bring her son home if elected, just before an assassination attempt nearly took his life.
Rep. Mark Kelly, R-Pa., was there for the meeting between Trump and Malphine Fogel before the president took the stage.
"The president survived the assassination attempt on July 13 in Butler, and he fulfilled his commitment to Mrs. Fogel that he would get her son home," Kelly told Fox News Digital. "It is an incredible, providential story."
During the rally, after his meeting with Fogel's mother, Trump was showing off a chart highlighting how illegal immigration skyrocketed under the Biden-Harris administration. As he turned toward the chart, he was hit by a bullet that pierced the upper part of his right ear by the now-deceased would-be-assassin, Thomas Matthew Crooks. Trump credits the chart for saving his life.
Kelly likened the situation to the classic movie "It's a Wonderful Life."
"The theme of the movie was that George Bailey was very frustrated, but he was given a glimpse of life and what would have happened if he hadn't been there – if he hadn't been born," Kelly recalled. "And if I go back to July 13, this is all providential."
"Mrs. Fogel has a chance to talk to the president, and she talks about what is happening to Marc. The president vows to get him home," Kelly continued. "It is a take-off of 'It's a Wonderful Life' and the opportunity, or the dilemma, that if you were never born, what would the consequences have been?"
"If President Trump did not survive the assassination attempt on July 13, Marc Fogel wouldn't be home today," Kelly said.
Fogel, an American teacher from Western Pennsylvania, returned to the United States late Tuesday, after Trump secured his release. Fogel was arrested in 2021 at an airport in Russia for possession of medical marijuana and was sentenced to 14 years in a Russian prison.
Kelly told Fox News Digital that "it is all about faith."
"Having been there and witnessed it, I think to myself, 'Oh my goodness, that tiny fraction of an inch, or whatever it was, is the difference between Marc Fogel being home and Marc Fogel not being home,'" he said. "Between making a promise to his mother and being able to keep it, as opposed to making a promise and never getting a chance to fulfill it."
Malphine Fogel recalled the Butler meeting with Trump on Fox News Channel's "America Newsroom."
"I met with President Trump, and he was just as cordial as he could be," she said. "He told me three different times, 'If I get in,' he said, 'I'll get him out' and I really think he's been instrumental."
Malphine Fogel told Fox News that "it was a total surprise" when she heard from her son from the Moscow airport.
"So, that meant that (they) had taken him out of the prison to Moscow.... The last week or so, for some crazy reason, I had a better feeling about things, but I hadn't heard from him in a week, so I thought that was odd and when he called… it was just a total shock," she said.
Meanwhile, Kelly told Fox News Digital, "There is a certain time in people's lives where you realize you don't have forever, you have right now, and you need to get it done."
"Politically, there is no one on either side of the aisle that could look at what happened with Marc Fogel and not somehow say, this is truly providential – this is not a political move," Kelly said. "This doesn't do anything for the president. He's already elected. He did this to keep a promise to a mother in her mid 90s – the only thing she wanted to see before she died was her son one more time."
Kelly added: "This is a promise made. Promise kept. It is truly providential. It is. It is a wonderful life."
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