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Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson said former President Donald Trump’s miracle survival by “divine intervention” on Saturday was evidence that “God is among us” in his address to the Republican National Convention (RNC) on Thursday.
“I think even people who don’t believe in God are beginning to think, ‘Well, maybe there’s something to this actually,'” Carlson said, just days after an attempted assassin’s bullet came within an inch of killing Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania. If not for divine providence through a last-second tilt of Trump’s head, he would be dead.
“I stand before you in this arena only by the grace of Almighty God,” Trump said shortly after Carlson took the stage.
Carlson said that Trump, raising an instinctive fist-pump of defiance immediately after being struck by a bullet, was transformed from a “political party’s nominee or a former president or a future president” into “the leader of a nation.”
“Everything was different after that moment,” he said.
“When he stood up after being shot in the face, bloodied, and put his hand up,” Carlson said, “that moment — that was a transformation.”
“Being a leader,” Carlson added, “is not a title. It’s organic. You can’t name someone a leader. A leader is the bravest man. That’s what a leader is.”
The former prime-time cable host also lauded the former president for having “turned down the most obvious opportunity in politics to inflame the nation after being shot.”
“Which is an opportunity that almost every other politician I’ve met and certainly his opponents would have taken instantly,” Carlson said. “But in the moments, the days, the week after the shooting, he did not say that. He did his best to bring the country together.”
Let me just sum it up. I do think the entire point from the famous escalator ride nine years ago until today of Donald Trump’s public life has been to remind us of one fact, which is, a leader’s duty is to his people, to his country, and to no other.
Watch Carlson’s full RNC speech here: