“We have fought together,” former President Donald J. Trump told his supporters on Saturday evening. “We have bled together.”
He was back in Butler, Pa., where, in July, he was shot in the ear, one of his followers was killed and two others were injured. He stood behind the thickest, most bulletproof glass you have ever seen and looked out into maybe the biggest crowd he has had all year. He said that he had returned “by the hand of providence and the grace of God” and that he would not ever bend or break “even in the face of death itself.” He looked around the sprawling farm grounds and declared them a “hallowed place.”
As holy sites go, this was an unusual one. The smell of onion rings and sunblock and cigarette smoke and diesel fuel and dirt swirled together in the air. There were a great many men with sniper rifles, prowling across nearby rooftops. There were monster trucks in the parking lot, and military veterans parachuting in as AC/DC’s “Back in Black” boomed from the sound system, and there was Elon Musk, dressed all in black, jumping up and down onstage.
Still, many of the former president’s supporters really do regard Butler as consecrated grounds. In the 12 weeks since the shooting, a spiritual lore has sprung up around the events of that day. It is a powerful lore that Mr. Trump, his campaign, his children and his running mate have nurtured, such that Saturday’s return to Butler was, for many of the movement’s followers, more than just a campaign rally — it was a religious event.
And it marked the stunning endpoint of a journey that Mr. Trump has traveled with people of faith, one that was at first defined by a transactionalism and gaze aversion — We’ll look the other way at his sinning if he delivers on the issues we care about — but that has now transmogrified into something else entirely.
“I see him as somebody chosen” by God, said Gayle Cameron, a 57-year-old school bus driver and school cafeteria worker from Volant, Pa., who was sitting in the grass, waiting for the former president to arrive. She said she “absolutely, 1,000 percent” saw evidence of the divine in the events of July 13, the day of the assassination attempt. “As soon as he took the stage, I said out loud, ‘Dear God, please protect this man,’” she recalled. “Five minutes later, he did. I mean, that was the quickest answered prayer I’ve ever seen.”
There were many homages on Saturday to what Trump supporters call the “angel flag.” At the original Butler rally, the massive American flag that was suspended behind Mr. Trump had been caught in the breeze and twisted into a knot that many claimed looked like an angel. On Saturday, the image appeared on a billboard outside the farm grounds, on T-shirts and on the press badges given to journalists by the Trump campaign. The campaign has stored the so-called angel flag for preservation; the flag hanging behind the former president on Saturday was even bigger (30 by 60 feet). At one point, a gust of wind swept through, and the flag began to coil in on itself, ever so slightly. Members of the audience leaped from their seats, pointing at it and raising their hands in the air.
Linda Dusch, a 60-year-old hair salon owner from Bethel Park, Pa., said that when she first heard about the angel flag, “I thought they were going a little too far — until I saw the pictures.” She said she believed that God intervened on July 13 to save Mr. Trump’s life, and that this meant he was preordained to win the election, “because he had to keep him around for that.”
Lately, Mr. Trump has been posting images on social media of St. Michael the Archangel as he stomps on the neck of a dragon. In Butler, there was a billboard depicting that, too. St. Michael is a Catholic saint, who is referenced in the Bible as an angel who defended God’s people in battle. Many Catholics, especially conservatives, have in recent years resurrected a prayer to St. Michael, asking him to protect them from the “snares of the Devil” and “all the evil spirits, who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls.” Mr. Trump has quoted the prayer online.
“It’s clever, it’s effective, it’s not subtle, if you know anything about that kind of mind-set,” said Candida Moss, a historian of early Christianity at the University of Birmingham in England. “The image that Trump tweets of St. Michael is from the Book of Revelation, and what he’s doing there is he’s alluding to the idea that you see a lot in right-wing Christian discourse — this idea that we’re in the battle for the soul of America.”
Ms. Moss added that Mr. Trump had also “gotten a lot more sophisticated with Christian iconography lately.” Onstage at the Republican National Convention, he kissed a helmet belonging to Corey Comperatore, the volunteer firefighter who was killed in Butler. “When you see Trump do something like that, on the one hand, it might strike someone as very strange,” said Ms. Moss. “On the other hand, it feels very religious, it feels very pious, almost as if he’s treating the victim as a martyr.” At the rally on Saturday, Mr. Trump said Mr. Comperatore had “an immortal position” on the stage.
How is it that this man — who once wrote “HAPPY GOOD FRIDAY TO ALL!” on social media, talked about “Two Corinthians” and waved a Bible upside down outside a church — has come to be seen as a saintly figure to so many people of faith? How are they able to overlook so much of his conduct that is less than pious?
“Probably the best Christian in the Bible is the Apostle Paul,” said Ms. Cameron. “But what was he before he was the apostle? He was Saul, and he murdered Christians. So God can choose anybody. He’s not a perfect person. But God doesn’t look for perfect.”
The crowd grew restless waiting for Mr. Trump. At one point, a man announced that the former president was going to fly overhead in his red-white-and-blue plane. A moment later, he zoomed by, and a woman threw her arms in the sky and shouted, “Save us, President Trump!”
Senator JD Vance of Ohio got on stage. He said that on July 13, “America felt the truth of Scripture.” And then he began to read some. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil…” When the president’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, spoke, she told the audience: “This is no longer a fight between Republican versus Democrat. Left versus right. It is good versus evil.” Some in the audience shouted out, “Good versus evil!” She told them that God “spared Donald Trump’s life because he is not finished with Donald Trump.”
One of Mr. Trump’s campaign managers, Chris LaCivita, wandered into the press pen.
Asked if all the religious symbolism was proving an effective theme or messaging tactic for the campaign, Mr. LaCivita said, “I don’t really know, I mean, look, everything has a place, everything has a purpose, everything has a meaning.”
“But,” he added, chuckling to himself a bit, “I always caution people not to read too much into what we’re doing.”
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