There may be a day in the distant future when we look back on the field in Butler, Pennsylvania and wonder if this is where everything changed. As it is, Americans woke up Sunday morning to a very different world.
In the aftermath of Donald Trump’s literal brush with death, campaigns, Congress, even political conventions seemed secondary to the deep horror at what we’ve become as a nation. And for once, after years of being at each others’ throats, a sober country has stopped to reflect: Is this really who we are?
In the days and hours since the bloody president emerged from the stage, fist in the air, everyone seems to understand the gravity of this moment. America was, as so many have pointed out, less than a quarter of an inch away from a national crisis from which we may never have recovered. “Sometimes the course of history depends on margins just that small,” the National Review reminds us solemnly.
The miracle of his survival was not lost on Trump, who acknowledged, “It was God alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening.” In an interview less than 24 hours after the assassination attempt, the reality of what might have happened “is just setting in,” the former president told the Washington Examiner.
“I rarely look away from the crowd,” Trump said. “Had I not done that in that moment, well, we would not be talking today, would we?”
As he boarded a plane for Wisconsin, the former president also made it clear that he understands what a pivotal moment this is. “It is a chance to bring the country together,” he said solemnly. “I was given that chance.”
Earlier in the day, Trump announced to the Examiner that he’d scrapped his intended remarks for the convention and started over. It would’ve been a “humdinger,” he said of the speech. But the world requires something “different” now, he realizes, “a lot different than it would’ve been two days ago.”
FRC Action Chairman Tony Perkins, who’s been on the ground as a delegate in Milwaukee, agrees that the weekend’s shocking events have completely “changed the dynamics of the convention.” “It’s time to come together,” he said on C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal” Monday morning.
And “not just for Republicans. It’s time to come together as a nation. It’s time for us to … as Jesus said, [to] love our neighbor. Now, that doesn’t mean that all of a sudden our differences go away,” Perkins said. “But you know what? We have an understanding that each and every human being is created in the image … of God. Therefore, they have value regardless of what political party they might be in.”
Do you pray for the spiritual salvation of our leaders?
For too long, Speaker Mike Johnson insisted, America has been a “tinderbox.” And the reason, he told Perkins on “Washington Watch” Monday evening, “is because the rhetoric has been so hot. I mean, I pointed out … on CNN just a few moments before the president went live with his remarks, and I told the group there, I said, ‘Listen, it is a fact that our Democratic colleagues have painted Donald Trump out to be the enemy of freedom.’ I mean, they use this language all the time. If he’s elected, it’s the end of democracy. It’s the end of the republic. You … tell people that enough, and they begin to actually believe it. And it spurs on [to] what has now become political violence. Now there’s offenders on both sides of the aisle, of course. And I’m the first to point that out. And I’ve been doing that consistently since I got to Congress.”
In fact, in 2017, long before the speakership drama of this year, the young Louisiana congressman and former Democratic Rep. Charlie Crist started the Honor and Civility Caucus, a bipartisan group that fought to “be stalwarts of our respective policy positions without tearing one another down.” Johnson even drafted a Commitment to Civility that was basically, as he describes it, a “one-page restatement of the Golden Rule: We treat one another with dignity and respect.”
Obviously, Johnson said Monday, “We’re going to have vigorous debates and vehement opposition on policy — but the people inside the building are not our enemies, right? Our enemies are like Hamas and Hezbollah and the people trying to kill us. Your political opposition is not your enemy. And the whole secret to our system, the way it’s supposed to work, is you have vehement opposition, but you have vigorous debate, and then you move forward. And we’ve got to do that.”
It’s a messy process, he agreed with Perkins. Democracy always will be. “[B]ut it’s still the greatest system in the history of the world,” Johnson said.
And the minute we abandon, try to shut one another down, or stifle debate, “the pressure builds. You’ve got to allow for that vigorous debate, but it’s got to be within the confines of that system,” the speaker added.
The key, Johnson believes, is “understand[ing] that our fellow Americans — we’re all part of the same country. We’re all brothers and sisters in that regard. I mean, if you look at it biblically, as you and I do, you’re supposed to love your enemies, right? Much less your fellow countrymen. You love your neighbor as yourself, as we’re admonished in Scripture to do. If you do that, it solves a lot of problems.”
Of course, that doesn’t mean we “change our perspective” or “abandon truths,” he was quick to clarify. “It just means we are civil in our conversation.”
That said, Perkins warned somberly, “I think we’re at a crossroads … a pivotal point … This could be the hinge upon which this nation turns, depending on how … Donald Trump addresses this moment. And he suggested that he’s going to take maybe a path less traveled.”
Frankly, the speaker said, “I’ve been so heartened to see his thoughts and comments articulated over the last day or so since the assassination attempt. He seems to have a very clear view of what this meant. God spared his life. I mean, it was a miracle. We all saw it. Everyone saw it. It’s hard to deny.”
Ironically, Johnson made these statements after very nearly losing his own sons last year after a visit to Mar-a-Lago — something he and the former president discussed at length last Thanksgiving.
“In Johnson’s telling, Will, who was 13, was drowning; 18-year-old Jack, prepared to give up his own life, tried to push his brother back to the surface. A parasailer happened to spot Will’s head from above. He hurried back to shore and alerted the lifeguards, who went out on jet skis to bring the boys in. Johnson arrived at the beach to find medical personnel hovering over his sons, pumping their chests. They would spend four hours in the emergency room before being cleared to go home,” The Atlantic wrote this spring in the first public telling of the near-loss.
“‘President Trump heard about it somehow — miraculously, this never made the news,’ Johnson recalled. The two got on the phone. ‘He was just so moved by the idea that we almost lost them, and we talked about it at great length. And we talked about the faith aspect of that, because he knows that I believe that, you know — that God spared the lives of my sons. That’s how I understand those events, and we talked about that.” Johnson continued: “And he said, he repeated back to me and said, ‘God — God saved your sons’ lives.’”
Eight months later, the former president has experienced the touch of divine providence for himself, and the young speaker who wondered where those conversations about God would go has a very poignant answer. “He said … ‘God has given me a chance here — and that is to unify the country.’ That’s his words, not mine. So I’m really excited to see how he articulates that and how we meet it out.”
This article appeared originally on The Washington Stand.
