God, country and Donald John Trump

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 20/07/2024 (537 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A friend wanted to go for coffee a couple of nights ago. It prompted me to respond with the three most spoken words in the English language, “No, thank you.” But the person persisted.

So I said the timing did not work because Donald Trump was speaking at the Republican Convention that night. I was writing a column about it the following day for the Saturday edition of this newspaper. My friend said coffee on Thursday night was a much better idea than preparing a column about a person everyone in Winnipeg hates. I thought to myself, how Trumpian that sounded — positively hyperbolic.

I’m confident the majority of people who read this newspaper are not Trump supporters. But I am equally confident that many in Winnipeg and many others reading this in Manitoba do indeed admire the former president, who, the data tells us, is on the road to another four years in the White House.

As of this moment, his opponent, U.S. President Joe Biden, is either fighting off or surrendering to the campaign inside his own party to replace him as the Democratic Party nominee. But I digress.

Regardless of how people in our own backyard may feel about Donald Trump, no serious person anywhere in our province and in our country thinks the president of the United States doesn’t have a great deal of influence on life in Canada, and for that matter, around the world.

The political, geostrategic and economic decisions made by the person in the Oval Office affect all of us. My job as a news analyst for the Free Press is not about fawning over the likable and bashing the detestable. This isn’t a fan rag. And I’m no fan of Donald Trump. But in the interest of conveying what’s true, I have to tell you that the Trump train is unstoppable. Nothing he did at the convention slowed down the locomotive. And you know that nothing that Joe Biden is doing is putting the brakes on the iron beast.

Donald Trump’s formal acceptance speech on the closing night of the Republican Convention was a dud.

You’d have to love Trump to easily endure the 92-minute ramble. My couch became a battleground. My analytical eye began to fight with my bored brain. In the end, my brain won.

If not for my PVR, I wouldn’t be able to report that I survived the foul turkey. The first 20 minutes were relatively interesting. Trump described his feelings about his near-death experience.

But after that the train chugged very slowly. Nobody loves a good speech more than I do. Nobody has better access to eloquent speech writers than the nominee of a major American political party.

But Trump doesn’t do eloquent. He delivered his usual laundry list of grievances about being a victim of the U.S. Department of Justice. And after that he painted the usual bleak picture of a country rife with violent crime enabled by the federal government’s deliberate incompetence on immigration.

I won’t waste our readers’ time with the quotes of an old poker shark who always has the same four card straight — patriotism, partisanship, fear and faith.

The faith card has always felt fraudulent in the hands of Donald Trump. The record shows his faith is purely political. He knows his most loyal supporters are white evangelical Christians. So he always incorporates language that makes them feel at home with him. The assassination attempt has cemented their affection for him.

With a straight face he can look them in the eye and say the bullet only grazed his ear because God didn’t want his brain to take a bullet. I am not theologically qualified to discuss “divine intervention.”

But I do have trouble with the idea that the Lord wanted to keep Trump alive while He also wanted firefighter Corey Comperatore to die while shielding his family from the assassin’s bullet. I don’t think I am attacking anyone’s personal faith by suggesting that Mr. Trump had luck on his side and Mr. Comperatore did not.

But I do get that luck doesn’t have the same psychological impact on believers as guardian angels, providence, and divine intervention.

Most political speeches are easily forgotten. Assassination attempts are not. What nearly happened in Butler, Pa. on July 13 will not be forgotten between now and Nov. 5.

For many Americans, it was a sign from above that Trump has been chosen to return to the White House.

Charles Adler is a longtime political commenter and podcaster. charles@charlesadler.com