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— NAVIGATING THE INSANITY* —
When Donald Trump resumes outdoor campaign rallies, he will be shielded by bulletproof glass. And that’s how it should be.
But why only now?
This seems like a sensible, and even necessary, precaution, so why did it take a near miss to put it in place?
We believe very strongly that, when it comes to protecting presidential candidates, the Secret Service must spare no expense and always err on the side of providing too many resources rather than too few of them.
We also believe that the Secret Service failed to do its job last month, when a shooter almost assassinated Trump, which would have plunged the country into unimaginable turmoil.
The resignation of Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle was a first step toward accountability, but the agency will have to take a long, hard look at how it keeps its protectees safe.
It is nice to see that there is bipartisan consensus that the Secret Service screwed up, that there must be an investigation, and that things will have to improve.
All that being said, why are Republicans upset about a lack of protection if they believe Trump is protected by God, as many of them have professed?
The former president himself just said so.
During his press conference Thursday, a reporter/sympathetic follower asked this question/offered this invitation to claim divine assistance: “You’ve spoken very passionately about how God saved your life, and I’m wondering, have you put much thought into why God saved your life, as in, for what purpose has he been shielding and protecting you?”
After making sure that everybody heard the question, Trump answered.
“So I don’t know if you heard the question: You’ve spoken about God saving your life, that I’ve spoken passionately about it, and something happened because that was a miracle.”
Trump then launched into an explanation of why he thought it was miraculous that he escaped the shooting with just a nick on his ear (after first saying that the crowd was massive).
You can watch it yourself here (and we’ll post the entire response at the bottom of this article), but, essentially, Trump said that a (misleading) chart displaying illegal immigration figures saved his life because it’s usually on the other side of him, which means he never moves to his right.
Oh, and that teleprompter everybody saw was not a teleprompter because he doesn’t need one.
(By the way, not to be nitpicky about it, but if he is saying the chart was responsible, isn’t it illegal immigration that saved Trump’s life?)
In any case, the former president is convinced that God spared him for a higher purpose.
“So yeah, God has something to do with it,” Trump said. “It’s a miracle, and God had something to do with it. And maybe it’s — we want to save the world.”
Now, if all of this is true, and the Lord is holding his loving hand over Trump, then it really doesn’t matter how little or how much protection the Secret Service provides, does it?
And, for the record we think it does matter, and it should be as much protection as is available.
We just want to point out that anybody claiming that Trump is protected by God shouldn’t be mad at the Secret Service, which would then be unnecessary.
Here is Trump’s full answer:
So I don’t know if you heard the question. You’ve spoken about God saving your life, that I’ve spoken passionately about it, and something happened because that was a miracle.
I never looked that way. The audience was massive, and it was in front of me. I never have the — that particular graph — that was a graph on — as you all know now that it’s very — I think everyone knows it very well, but it showed the great numbers on illegal immigration.
It was the lowest point we’ve ever had, and it was one that I used less than 20 percent of the time. It’s always at the end of the speech, not at the beginning of the speech. And it’s always on the left side, not the right side.
And yet, for some reason, I called it — it’s not on a teleprompter. I do things largely without a teleprompter, frankly, because it’s hard to hold an audience if you’re going to go for an hour and a half or two hours reading a script. And I just talked about it, and I moved to my right, turned sharply to my right, ping, and if I didn’t do that, I’m not here with you.
So yeah, God has something to do with it. It’s a miracle, and God had something to do with it. And maybe it’s — we want to save the world.
This world is going down. This world is going down. So it could be.
But I believe that. I believe that. My sons are very good shooters.
They’re like scratch golfers, better, relatively speaking, with shooters. Great shooters. And Eric and Don both told me, from 130 yards, I said, well, that’s pretty far away, isn’t it? They said, no, that’s like a 1-foot putt with weapons like the one being used.
Plus, he was a good shooter. This guy was a good shooter. He went to the range and shot a lot, and he was supposed to be a pretty good shooter.
They said a bad shooter would hit the target almost 100 percent of the time.
*In his Navigating the Insanity columns, Klaus Marre provides the kind of hard-hitting, thought-provoking, and often humorous analysis you won’t find anywhere else.
