Worship him or hate him, you must admit that Trump’s ascendancy to a second U.S. Presidency has been marked by a series of highly improbable, if not miraculous, events. The near-miss assassination attempt in Pennsylvania was but one among many unlikely events.
Trump had never been taken seriously by voters in his previous presidential campaigns when he descended the golden escalators in Trump Tower in 2015. During the primary campaign that followed, his Republican opponents, one by one, labeled him as unfit for the presidency. One by one, he nick-named, belittled, and picked them off, as his support grew among Republican voters.
Hillary Clinton, his Democratic opponent, was perhaps the most politically experienced person to ever run for president. Going into the election, it appeared the nation would have its first female president. The morning after the election, the world was shocked that the American people had elected a wealthy, misogynistic, racist, narcissistic reality TV star with no political experience to be President of the United States.
His second election in 2024 was even more improbable. He had consistently denied that he lost the 2020 presidential election, despite dozens of court cases and investigations finding no significant voter fraud. He had attempted to coerce the U.S. Senate into overturning the election by instigating and facilitating an assault on the U.S. Capitol, widely regarded as an insurrection or attempted coup d'état. He had been impeached for withholding congressionally mandated military support to coerce Ukraine into discrediting his political opponent for the presidency. Trump was impeached again after leaving office for the high crime of insurrection.
The Republican Senate had failed to convict him in both instances, but a twice-impeached, morally flawed, highly unpopular former president seemed an unlikely Republican candidate for the 2024 election. Regardless, Trump and his MAGA supporters were able to gain control of the Republican party and mounted a national propaganda campaign to exonerate Trump, claiming that he was the victim of a "witch hunt." No other Republican was able to mount a significant campaign against him for the 2024 nomination.
By the time Trump was reelected in 2024, he had been convicted on 34 felony counts for falsifying business records connected to hush money payments to an adult film star. A jury in 2023 had found Trump liable for sexually abusing columnist E. Jean Carroll in 1996, awarding her $5 million. A Special Counsel, Jack Smith, was appointed in 2022 to investigate Trump’s role in the January 6 insurrection.
Smith’s work was delayed by a surprising Supreme Court ruling granting Trump immunity for crimes committed in carrying out official duties. He nonetheless issued a report on Jan. 7, 2025, explaining potential indictment for Trump’s role in the January 6 insurrection and why he believed Trump would have been convicted had the case gone to trial.
To Trump supporters, the would-be assassin’s narrow miss of Trump at the 2024 rally in Pennsylvania had simply seemed to confirm his supporters' claims that he had been chosen by God to “make America great again.” At the Florida convention center on the night of the election, Donald Trump declared: “Many people have told me that God spared my life for a reason, and that reason was to save our country and to restore America to greatness.”
Thinking about Trump’s unlikely political ascendence, I was reminded of George Washington’s references to the unlikely events leading up to the founding of the nation in his inaugural address, sometimes referred to as “The American Covenant.” The original text is at the bottom of this post, but I asked ChatGTP to translate Washington’s formal language into “plain English:”
“Every step toward becoming an independent nation seems to have been marked by signs of divine guidance. In the recent major change to our united government, the calm discussion and willing agreement of so many separate states is unlike the way most governments are formed. This should inspire us to give sincere thanks to God and to look forward with hope to future blessings, just as past events suggest we might expect them.”
From these remarks, it's easy to see how Trump’s religious loyalists might interpret his unlikely path to a second presidency as “marked ty signs of divine guidance.” Trump’s political ascendancy is unlike any other, and they may “look forward with hope to future blessings.” However, there is a far more likely interpretation of Trump's ascendency in the next paragraphs of Washington’s address.
“It is a well-proven truth that virtue and happiness go hand in hand, as do duty and benefit, and that honest, noble policies bring lasting prosperity and well-being. We should believe just as firmly that we cannot expect Heaven’s favor if we ignore the eternal principles of order and right that Heaven itself has established.”
Trump’s political career has been one of lies and immorality, duty only to self, not to others, dishonesty, and policies of greed and selfishness with no thought to lasting prosperity or societal well-being. Trump didn’t create the degraded societal and political environment that led to his second election as president. The nation for decades has been “ignoring the eternal principles of order and right Heaven itself has established.” We should not have expected Heaven’s favor with the election of a president committed to the principles upon which this nation was founded but have been abandoned. If Trump was chosen by God, he was chosen to bring retribution to the nation for breaking the American Covenant.
Donald Trump has used lies and appeals to the racist, misogynist, and homophobic tendencies to convince people who feel oppressed and marginalized by a post-industrial economy that only he can solve their problems and “make America great again.” He has turned the Republican Party into the party of Donald Trump and berates, threatens, or “primaries out” anyone in the party who questions his supreme authority.
He surrounds himself with “loyalists” who will do anything he wants done and purges the government of anyone who might question or oppose him. He is using his autocratic authority to carry out threats of retribution against anyone who has opposed him, including the free press or public media, law firms, prosecutors, judges, and political opponents. He has withheld federal funds from universities he labels as elitists because they are committed to the truth and are unwilling to bend to his illusion of reality.
Trump has taken over the responsibilities of Congress in closing down and defunding departments, agencies, and programs established by Congress, imposing tariffs on long-time allies and trading partners, and enforcing immigration policies as restrictive as the courts will allow. He is turning Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, into a national police force, and is threatening to use National Guard and Army troops to police the big cities in Democratic states. He has directed Republican governors to gerrymander districts to ensure his control of the House of Representatives in the 2026 midterm elections, giving him more time to consolidate the power needed to dictate the outcome of the 2028 general elections.
Trump’s popularity is slipping among independents and moderate Republicans, but he maintains enough support to continue his autocratic agenda, the agenda spelled out in Project 2025. He uses a constant barrage of lies to stoke fear among those who might oppose him and makes empty promise of economic prosperity to the MAGA cult members who support him. The U.S. Supreme Court has allowed him to proceed with his autocratic agenda, despite his showing utter contempt for any constitutional restrictions on the power of the presidency. The nation seems destined to reap the consequences of decades of ignoring “the principles of order and right that Heaven itself has established.”
In his second inaugural address, Abraham Lincoln looked back at the Civil War as the nation’s retribution for failing to address the inherent "wrongness" of slavery. Lincoln said, again translated into plain English by ChatGTP:
“God has His own purposes. The Scripture says, ‘Trouble will come into the world because of wrongs; it is bound to happen—but woe to the one who causes them.’ If we believe that American slavery was one of those wrongs which, in God’s plan, had to come—but which, after lasting through His appointed time, He now wills to remove—and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the penalty for that wrong, shall we see in this anything contrary to the justice of the living God?”
Lincoln saw the Civil War as the result of failing to respect “the principles of order and rightness established by Heaven itself.” He challenged the nation to return to those principles to achieve a just and lasting peace as it looked toward the future. He said:
“With malice toward none; with charity for all; with steadfastness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us press on to finish the work we are in: to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for those who have borne the battle, and for their widows and orphans; to do all that may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations.”
Once again, we have broken the American Covenant, and once again, we seem destined to reap the consequences. How should we respond to the emerging Trump dictatorship and whatever we may be forced to endure as a consequence? Again, we can trust in the words of Lincoln, this time in his Cooper Union address, during his first presidential campaign: “Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.”
Or we can look to the words of Martin Luther King Jr., who saw the needless destruction and humiliation of the Vietnam War as retribution for the nation’s failure to address the sins of racism and poverty. He said:
“I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered."
"This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one’s tribe, race, class and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all mankind. . . .
If we will make the right choice, we will be able to transform the jangling discord of our world into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. If we will but make the right choice, we will be able to speed up the day, all over America and all over the world, when justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
I have nothing to add.
John Ikerd
From transcripts of original texts:
From George Washington’s First Inaugural Address:
Every step by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency; and in the important revolution just accomplished in the system of their united government the tranquil deliberations and voluntary consent of so many distinct communities from which the event has resulted can not be compared with the means by which most governments have been established without some return of pious gratitude, along with an humble anticipation of the future blessings which the past seem to presage.
There is no truth more thoroughly established than that there exists in the economy and course of nature an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness; between duty and advantage; between the genuine maxims of an honest and magnanimous policy and the solid rewards of public prosperity and felicity; since we ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained.
From Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address:
The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses for it must needs be that offenses come but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which in the providence of God must needs come but which having continued through His appointed time He now wills to remove and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him.
"With malice toward none with charity for all with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan ~ to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."
John Ikerd
Notes:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c20g1zvgj4do
https://www.britannica.com/.../January-6-U-S-Capitol-attack
https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/.../jack-smiths-final.../
https://www.archives.gov/.../president-george-washingtons...
https://www.nps.gov/.../hist.../lincoln-second-inaugural.htm
https://constitutioncenter.org/.../beyond-vietnam-a-time...