No small amount of people, on social media and even on television, credited divine intervention in keeping Donald Trump alive after an assassin’s bullet nearly took his head off. Count Trump himself among them. In a post on Truth Social, Trump credited “God alone” for being alive this morning, while offering condolences to the man killed in the assassination attempt.
Trump also took a page from FDR and reassured Americans that we can use this moment to “stand United, and show our True Character as Americans”:
This speaks to a quality of character that emerged stunningly in the aftermath of the shooting last night. The iconic photograph of a defiant and courageous Trump getting up after being shot and still potentially under fire showed just exactly why he resonates with people. Pundits and opponents have scoffed at his indefatigability as some kind of a show, but Trump literally proved it under fire last night. And in a political environment where phony bluster and PR spin has created deep cynicism about our institutions, Trump’s personal courage matters.
It goes directly to Trump’s point about fear. As Franklin Delano Roosevelt famously declared during the depths of the Great Depression, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Trump personified it last night, even though the phrase isn’t literally true, and it wasn’t literally true when FDR said it. The United States was mired in its worst economic disaster, and both fascism and communism were rising in Europe. Before the decade was up, Europe would collapse into its worst war in history, and less than two years later, the US would be fighting a two-front war against the Axis.
There is plenty to fear, in other words. There always is. But giving into that fear is a choice. FDR understood the danger of choosing fear over character, and panic over determination to do what’s right. We can always debate FDR’s actual policy choices and whether they did more damage than good, but his determination to keep panic at bay was his best instinct and perhaps his greatest accomplishment before the war.
Trump’s message today echoes that call to better angels, as I put it last night, almost literally. Trump gives thanks to the Lord for his life, a not-uncommon reaction to such circumstances, but he does it to remind Americans that a greater Power watches over us. We can either focus on fear and all of the potential dangers until we simply cannot function, or we can “remain resilient in our Faith and Defiant in the face of Wickedness,” and “show our True Character as Americans, remaining Strong and Determined, and not allowing Evil to Win.”
Those are choices we all have to make. In the face of wickedness and evil in any context, do we hug the ground and find a corner into which to crawl and protect ourselves out of very rational and understandable fear? Do we panic and retaliate blindly and stupidly, out of anger and fear, another impulse that feeds wickedness and evil? Or if we are still able, do we choose to stand defiant, shake our fist into its face, and yell “Fight!” and demonstrate what character and faith looks like as an example to all?
Trump made his choice last night. Now the rest of us must do so as well.
