Dr Nsungbemo Ezung
Wokha Town
President Donald Trump miraculously survived a major assassination attempt during one of his presidential campaign trail last Saturday at Pennsylvania. The photo of the blood-stained President, inflicted by an injury on his right ear, rising to his feet again pumping his fist in front of the US flag and surrounded by the secret service agents seconds after the assassination bid will go down as one of the most iconic photos in the world history. Instead of letting his protection team whisk him away, he chose to stand to his feet again and gestured to the watching world to immediately assure his supporters that he was okay and he would continue his fight for the people thereby cementing his larger-than-life image of a real-time fighter and a warrior President who never shy away from action and fighting for the people.
One can draw two very important lessons from the miraculous deliverance of Donald Trump from what could be an assassin’s bullets. First, mankind can use God’s given Freedom to do evil and create all sorts of problems in the world causing pain and suffering for humanity. And that should be one good answer to the problem of evil in the world (by the way, there are many good answers that we can give to the question of the origin and the problem of evil). Evil, as part of a choice within the framework of freedom, is granted by God. And one can use his freedom to choose either good or evil and to be either a blessing or a curse to the world.
Why then God, an all-loving and all-knowing, mysteriously made evil a part of choice and would permit evil to prevail in the world, and how did HE deal with the evil? The answers to the above questions take us to the second lesson from Donald Trump’s assassination attempt. That, despite humanity choosing evil over good, God in HIS providential power can still do wonders and miracles to foil all forms of evil intent of mankind. It is humanly impossible to give a reason why a bullet coming from just approximately 400 feet could miss the President. The position of the assassin from where he fired the shots bears testimony to the fact that it was none other than the miracle works of God that had saved the life of the President. The assassin was in a sort of a perfect position to shoot and accurately hit his target. A shooter from the midst of the crowd can be obstructed and distracted by the crowd. But the shooter in this case was on the roof of one of the buildings around the venue of the rally having no crowd to obstruct his plan. It is safe to note that the President survived by means of divine protection which the President himself acknowledged later that “it was God alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening”.
While the conspiracy theories abound, regarding the “possibility” of Trump’s political opponents behind the whole act of assassination attempt, one thing that was certain was the inadequate security that was in place for Donald Trump. There is a report that the demand for additional security protection for the President for his campaign trail was not met by the federal authority in the past. It’s hard to imagine how the building near the venue of the rally was not sealed by the protection team beforehand which gave the would-be-assassin a perfect spot to execute his plan that nearly cost the life of the President.
The Team Trump and the supporters of Donald Trump in the United States and the world around would read the President’s miraculous deliverance from the possible assassin’s bullet as an act of God not only to save the life of the President but also the movement that the President himself is leading. The ‘Make America Great Again (MAGA)’ Movement that Donald Trump is leading has already captured the imagination of not only the United States but the whole world. It has been dominating the political discourse of the world ever since Donald Trump’s foray into American politics. With Donald Trump at the center stage of world politics, the MAGA Movement became not just a campaign slogan to win an election but a people’s centric and anti-establishment social and political movement that could redefine America and the world of the 21st century. A resurgent Donald Trump, beating the assassin’s bullet, would likely further boost the MAGA Campaign and set the stage for the eventual return of Donald Trump to the White House.
It was on March 30, 1981 Ronald Reagan was just over two months into his presidency when he survived an assassination attempt although suffering injuries, which was more severe than what Donald Trump had suffered this time around. Ronald Reagan too eventually and miraculously survived, and the rest is history. He went on to become one of the greatest and most consequential US Presidents of all time. The world still remembers his great “Tear down this (Berlin) Wall!” Speech in front of the western section of the historic Brandenburg Gate, Berlin directing the then Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to dismantle the Berlin Wall, built by the Soviets to separate the people of East Germany from West Germany and which had become a symbol of division between East and West Europe for the preceding three decades. The “Tear down this Wall!” speech had become a prelude to the inevitable dismantling of the Berlin Wall, the disintegration of the Soviet Bloc and the end of the Cold War. Ronald Reagan was the President behind the triumph of the West over communism, which eventually became the greatest triumph of humanity since World War 2.
Today, led by President Donald Trump the great MAGA movement envisaged a pro-people, anti-establishment and anti-globalist agendas in America and the world. An enduring MAGA message that in a democracy political power belongs to the people and not the government, and that “in America, we don’t worship government, we worship God” underlines the battlelines that are drawn between the MAGAs and the rest of the political ideologies. And the battle is for Donald Trump to win and to win it for the people.
