After surviving an assassination attempt during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania in July, Donald Trump told a Fox News host that he thinks God believes he will “fix” the country.
“If you believe in God, I think you believe in God more. But then somebody says, ‘Why?’ I want to believe that God thinks I’m trying to fix this country,” Trump told Mark Levin on the Life, Liberty & Religion show after the host asked him if the July 13 shootings had strengthened his faith in the Almighty.
Former U.S. president and current Republican presidential candidate Trump has in recent months sought to mobilize his religious base and some of its most extreme elements, including Christian nationalists, in his bid for reelection to the White House.
Mr Trump had previously suggested it was God’s will that Matthew Crook’s bullet only grazed his ear. “I wasn’t supposed to be here. I was supposed to be dead,” he told reporters shortly after the shooting.
“A lot of people say it’s either luck or God that I’m still here,” he said.
In an interview with Fox News, Trump began by saying that God had given his survival a political purpose: “Our country is so sick, so broken. Our country is just broken. Maybe that’s the reason, but I don’t know. A lot of people are saying that.”
As evidence, he cited his sons, who are hunters, who said “there was no way Crooks could have missed from that distance,” adding that he believed the shooter seen by rally attendees “was probably in a hurry.”
Trump praised the Secret Service, which has come under heavy criticism for failing to stop Crooks before he took up position on a rooftop less than 300 feet from the stage and fired eight shots, killing one person and seriously wounding two others.
“Obviously somebody should have been on the roof, and there were some issues, but I have to say, the Secret Service. They were on me, and bullets were flying over us, and not one of them said, ‘Oh, I’m not going to do that,'” Trump said.
While the former US president prayed for God’s will, former Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross had publicly warned Trump against “getting too big and too strong” during his upcoming debate with Vice President Kamala Harris on September 10.
“The only danger is that Trump is big, strong and manly,” Ross told radio host John Catsimatidis over the weekend. “He has to be careful that he doesn’t come across as pressuring women. Women don’t like to be pushed too far.”
During Trump’s presidency, advisers made frequent television appearances to voice their views they wanted the president to consider. Ross said the debate should be about “real issues” such as inflation, foreign policy and the southern border, not theatrics.
“I think they need to find out where Trump stands on these issues and bring it into a real debate,” Ross said. “If he sticks to these issues, I think he’ll do well.”
