An inch.
One inch, and President Donald J. Trump would be dead.
One slight turn of the head.
One slight turn of the head saved Donald J. Trump’s life.
The fact that Donald J. Trump is alive today is a miracle. There is no other way to see it. His assassin had a clear line of sight. He was 135 meters from Trump. He got off multiple rounds.
And Trump was wounded. Barely grazed in the ear, bleeding profusely, Trump rose from the ground, pumped his fist, and shouted, “Fight!”
Whatever the reason—and who knows the reasons of God?—God decided that Donald J. Trump would live on Saturday.
And that demands an answer of us: Can we, as Trump has now said, unify? Can we come together as Americans? Because if that assassin’s bullet had been one inch the other way, our country would have found itself in an unprecedented crisis. The leading candidate for the candidacy, the ex-president of the United States, a man targeted by his political opposition more than any figure our lifetimes, would have been murdered on national television.
What would have come next?
It is almost impossible to imagine. Given the obvious questions about the failures of the Secret Service to secure the roof from which the assassin fired his deadly shots, given the crisis of confidence in our institutions, given the fact that Joe Biden has run an entire campaign on the basis that Trump is an existential threat to the republic—could we ever come together again? Or would the assassination of Trump have ushered in an era of extreme violence in our politics? Would it have presaged the breaking apart of our social bonds, the actual dissolution of our national ties?
God didn’t just save Donald J. Trump on Saturday. He may have saved the United States as well.
What comes next?
What should come next is a realization that Americans are, in fact, compatriots. That we share a country and a future together. The language of dissolution—the line that “if (INSERT CANDIDATE) wins the presidency, there will never be another election”—must stop. It is a lie. It was always a lie. Neither candidate on the ballot is Hitler. Neither candidate wishes to end America’s elections or send his opponents to concentration camps.
I want Donald Trump to win. I’ve given money to his campaign. I think Joe Biden is the worst president in modern history. But I do not believe that Joe Biden will end America itself if he wins. America will continue to exist, and my political side will continue to fight for its principles.
Joe Biden had the opportunity to deliver such a message in the hours after the Trump assassination attempt—and he failed signally. He reminded Americans of “the need for us to lower the temperature in our politics” but didn’t say the one phrase that might have given such a statement credibility: “everyone, including me.”
And indeed, just the next day, he gave an interview to NBC’s Lester Holt in which he denied any role in ramping up the hysterical tone of America’s political rhetoric. Instead, he suggested, that hysterical tone was all the fault of Donald Trump. In essence, it was Trump’s own fault someone tried to shoot him.
This is an absurdity. More than that, it is morally disgraceful.
This week, Trump has the opportunity to do what Biden wouldn’t: unify the country. He says he wants to do just that. And he can do so by reminding us of the better angels of our nature and by decrying the catastrophist rhetoric that has infected our politics. He can point out that while he disagrees with Joe Biden—while he thinks Biden is the worst president in American history—Joe Biden will not be the end of America.
We will continue to live together, to work together and to be a nation.
God gave us all another chance on Saturday. We ought to take it.
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