How the Trump shooting supercharged beliefs in a divine right of MAGA
The reference is unmistakable for most anyone who attended that fateful rally on July 13, 2024. A few hours before Trump spoke, the 30-by-60-foot flag suspended over the stage got wrapped up in the wind.
'Some people thought it looked like an angel,' said Keith Karns, the pastor of the Church of God at Connoquenessing.
The image of the twisted flag quickly joined the constellation of MAGA symbols, alongside the photo of Trump's blood-streaked cheek and raised fist. A year's passage has clarified how the assassination attempt was a turning point for the religious dimension to Trump's movement, leading to his claim at his second inauguration to a divine mandate: 'I was saved by God to Make America Great Again.'
There were already whispers of messianism among some of Trump's supporters, such as the QAnon offshoot called Negative 48 whose members frequented his rallies in 2022. Trump has long claimed that God was on his movement's side, and attendees at Trump rallies have routinely described the events in spiritual terms.
But after the assassination attempt, many of his followers — and most notably Trump himself — more explicitly cast him as a divine instrument.
'It is difficult not to see the hand of Providence in Trump's survival of two assassination attempts, one by less than an inch,' said Ralph Reed, an influential evangelical leader and Republican strategist. 'President Trump has said publicly he believes God spared his life, and millions of his supporters feel the same way. For what purpose only God knows, but it clearly isn't an insubstantial one.'
Internal data and modeling from Reed's Faith and Freedom Coalition estimates that the population of social conservatives and evangelicals has increased tenfold since the 1990s and by about 30 percent since 2010. That increase comes even as fewer Americans are regularly attending church. Only 37 percent of U.S. adults attended religious services at least once a month in 2024, down from 55 percent in 1972 and 47 percent in 2000, according to the General Social Survey by NORC at the University of Chicago.
Politics increasingly entered the pulpit at the demand of congregants, and pastors indulged those demands for fear of losing members, according to the journalist Tim Alberta in his 2024 book 'The Kingdom, the Power and the Glory.' On Monday the Trump administration said a federal prohibition on campaigning by nonprofit organizations does not apply to houses of worship, implementing a long-standing campaign promise to let churches make more explicit political endorsements.
Trump has never been known for his personal piety, but he has long enjoyed the overwhelming support of evangelicals. His own reaction to the Butler shooting was initially, 'I'm not supposed to be here' — meaning he was not supposed to be alive — according to a new book about the campaign, '2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America.' (The book is co-written by the author of this article.)
His top adviser, Susie Wiles, told him, 'You do know this is God,' the book says. After that, Trump began saying: 'If anyone ever doubted there was a God, that proved there was.'
In Butler the day after the shooting, county GOP chair Jim Hulings recalled trying to return to the crime scene and being unable to get near it across the police tape. But he did notice that all the church parking lots were full.
'We cling to our guns and our Bibles,' Hulings said, reappropriating an infamous remark about small-town Pennsylvania that Barack Obama made at a San Francisco fundraiser in 2008.
That morning at the Church of God at Connoquenessing, Karns preached about the fragility of life, quoting Psalm 90 likening man's time on Earth to the grass that grows and withers.
His own son, daughters-in-law and grandchildren were at the rally, seated in the bleachers behind the stage. They became friendly with a kind man seated in front of them, Corey Comperatore, a 50-year-old local volunteer firefighter who was there with his family. Before Trump arrived, Comperatore had helped Karns's 12-year-old granddaughter, Alexa, recover her dropped phone after it fell through the bleachers, and he passed out water bottles to help those around him stay hydrated in the heat.
When the gunman opened fire from a nearby factory roof, Comperatore was struck and killed trying to protect his family.
'It's one of those things where you feel like you're in this place at a certain time, and there's a reason for it,' Lisa Karns, Alexa's mother and the pastor's daughter-in-law, said. 'I felt like, 'God, why take him? You could have taken me.''
That night the Karns family met with the pastor and showed him the photos of the twisted flag. He decided to put the image on a sign for the church, as a message of comfort, to thank God for keeping them safe and to honor Comperatore. 'It wasn't necessarily a political statement,' he said.
On the way home, Alexa told Lisa Karns that she had prayed for Trump before the rally, asking God to protect him. Lisa Karns suggested she write Trump a card telling him.
'Dear President Trump,' the 12-year-old wrote in green pen, under a sketch of an American flag, 'I was on the same bleachers of the man who died. … Before the rally I had prayed that you wouldn't get shot because it sounded like something that might happen. God answered my prayers. … I will still pray for you. I hope you win the election!'
He wrote back a few weeks later. 'For you and all those in attendance on that fateful day, we remain resolved to fight for our great country,' Trump and his wife, Melania, said. 'May God bless you and keep you safe, little one.' Lisa Karns framed the letter and hung it on a wall in their home.
The Republican National Convention that immediately followed the shooting brought talk of God's hand from private rumblings to the prime-time stage.
'That was a transformation,' Tucker Carlson said on the final night in Milwaukee. 'This was no longer a man.'
'Divine intervention,' a man shouted from the floor.
'I think it was,' Carlson agreed. He went on: 'I think even people who don't believe in God are beginning to think, 'Maybe there's something to this, actually.''
Trump's son Eric embraced the sentiment in his speech introducing his father: 'By the grace of God, divine intervention and your guardian angels above, you survived.'
The candidate himself attested, 'I felt very safe because I had God on my side.'
By the time Trump returned to Butler for a second rally in October, a man dragged a wooden cross up and down the road to the fairgrounds. At a prayer circle the night before, Susan Sevy from East Liverpool, Ohio, who had also attended the July rally, said the time when Trump was shot, 6:11 p.m., corresponded to a verse of Ephesians about putting on the armor of God.
On the rally stage, speakers recalled seeing signs or hearing a heavenly voice.
'That flag right there displayed like a crucifix or an angel on it,' Butler Township Commissioner Sam Zurzolo said. 'I know everybody has seen that, and I think that was a warning,'
'I heard a voice — loud, clear, rich and reassuring,' said James Sweetland, a retired ER doctor who tended to Comperatore. 'It spoke to me. It said, 'Go. Go they need your help. … I'm telling you right now that was a voice of God.'
The Trump campaign worked to bring back attendees from the first rally, and the Karns family returned to sit in the rows of chairs below the bleachers. At one point during the early speeches, the sound system glitched, and someone shouted for a medic, and the pastor's other daughter-in-law, Christie Karns, felt her anxiety spike. She wondered why she had come back and put herself through this, she said.
At that moment, the giant flag overhead flipped on itself again, resuming the Y shape that reminded her of an angel. Then it gracefully flipped back to normal.
'We just all looked at each other and we were like, 'Oh my word,'' Christie Karns said. 'No one could have done that. It could have only been God. And it just gave us that peace.'
In church last Sunday, Pastor Karns returned to the theme of fragility, again referencing the metaphor of grass that grows and withers. 'It's here one minute, and the next minute it's gone,' he said. In his sermon he asked worshipers to reflect on the past year, considering the trials they faced and the strength God gave them.
'It took a very strong man who could help right our country back to being God's country,' Lisa Karns said. 'I do feel like God protected him to help our country.'
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