“GOD protected President Trump yesterday,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, who has been a major proponent of Christian nationalist ideology, claimed in a post on X.
Trump himself echoed these claims in a post on Truth Social: “It was God alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening,” the former president said.
But in the days following the shooting, a much broader range of Trump supporters began to invoke the idea that Trump had been protected by God to deliver a Christian America..
“If it isn’t apparent enough who God wants to win,” YouTuber and boxer Jake Paul, who recently invited Trump to one of his fights, posted on X. “When you try and kill God’s angels and saviors of the world it just makes them bigger.”
On Sunday evening, on the eve of the RNC, Trump supporters held a prayer vigil outside the event venue. In interviews with 18 RNC delegates on Monday, Reuters found that all but two believed God had a hand to play in Trump’s survival.
Many people, including Trump’s own son Eric Trump, his former advisor Roger Stone, and endless conspiracy accounts on X, labeled the slight turn of the head that caused the bullet to graze Trump’s ear rather than kill him as a moment of “divine intervention.”
In many cases, these claims were accompanied by what appear to be AI-generated images of Trump with Jesus Christ standing behind him with his hands on Trump’s shoulders. Lara Trump, the former president’s daughter-in-law and co-chair of the RNC, was among those sharing such pictures. Others claimed that an American flag flapping in the breeze above the stage where Trump spoke resembled the form taken by an angel.
Charlie Kirk, the founder of conservative activist group Turning Point USA, posted on X that he believed God had intervened to protect Trump and the future of the US.
“Consider for a moment that Donald Trump, and the fortunes of the entire country, might have been saved today by a gust of wind that pushed that bullet ever so slightly,” Kirk wrote on X. “The Holy Spirit in scripture is often associated with a gust of wind. God’s hand is on Donald Trump.”
As well as claims of divine intervention, many Trump supporters looked for significance in the mundane details of the shooting.
“The bullets were fired at 6:11pm,” far-right troll and Pizzagate promoter Jack Posobiec wrote on X, adding: “Ephesians 6:11.” which says “Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.”
While not specifically Christian nationalist, the broader idea that God had intervened in events was also promoted by spiritual influencers on X, Instagram and Telegram highlighting prophetic claims made months ago that appeared to accurately predict what happened on Saturday.
Earlier this month, for example, a self-described visionary, Jelaila Starr, predicted on a YouTube show that there would be a failed assassination attempt on Trump in July or August. “She said that it would be a replay of galactic history when humanity lived in its 2nd great experiment in the Pleiadian constellation,” the host of the show, Michael Salla, wrote this week.
Separately, a number of pro-Trump accounts also flagged a video from April where an evangelical “prophet” claimed to have had a dream about an assassination attempt on Trump, where the bullet passed so close to his head that it shattered his eardrum.
What was noticeably absent from all of these claims of God protecting Trump was any reference to Corey Comperatore, the former fire chief who was killed by a bullet meant for Trump while using his body to shield his family at the rally.
This, Jones said, speaks to the dangerous divisions that result from claiming that God was protecting Trump but not anyone else.
“The danger with such ex post facto theology for a democratic society is that it is perhaps the most powerful source of confirmation bias and polarization: It attributes Providential action to contingent events, but only if they conform to preconceived beliefs,” Jones said. “It’s ultimately a crass and arrogant declaration that God is on our side, that God protects our candidates and our interests but not others.”
