Guiding Hand: Look At All Trump Survived To Get Here

Wind chills hovered in the teens on Monday morning in the nation’s capital as President-elect Donald J. Trump prepared to take the presidential oath of office inside the more comfortable U.S. Capitol Rotunda. It was fitting it was so frigid in Washington, D.C., on this Inauguration Day. Democrats had long thought it would be a cold day in hell before Republican Trump would be elected president again. 

But here he was, the man the left loves to hate, being sworn in as the 47th president of the United States.

‘I Was Saved by God’

Let’s face it, a lot of Trump Derangement Syndrome sufferers believed the 45th president would be in prison by Jan. 20, 2025, a day Trump in his inaugural address — for so many reasons — declared as “Liberation Day.” Plenty of MAGA conservatives rightly worried, too, that this great drainer of the swamp, the disrupter of the deep state, wouldn’t make it to this moment.

But by the grace of God and a fragment of an inch, Donald Trump stood before his fellow Americans and raised his right hand to once again “solemnly swear to faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States.” Political redemption and the sweet, sweet revenge of success? Sure. The hand of providence? Trump absolutely believes so, and so do many of his supporters.  

“I was saved by God to make America Great Again,” he said to a standing ovation from his family and friends. Cameras panned to the president’s wife, First Lady Melania Trump, and their son, Barron, who fervently nodded. His political opponents, who have spent the better part of the past decade trying to destroy him, kept their seats, their eyes filled with a mix of disdain and loss.  

“That is why each day under our administration of American patriots we will be working to meet every crisis with dignity and power and strength,” Trump continued. “We will move with purpose and speed to bring back hope, posterity, safety, and peace for citizens of every race, religion, color, and creed.”

“For American citizens, Jan. 20, 2025, is Liberation Day,” the president triumphantly proclaimed to applause from the liberated and stunned expressions from his predecessors, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democrats’ DEI-promoted replacement candidate Trump vanquished in November’s election. 

Look at all this man — and this country — survived to get to this moment. 

‘They Call It Lawfare’

Trump faced multiple criminal prosecutions through Democrats’ weaponization of the criminal justice system, particularly Biden’s corrupt Department of Justice. He was convicted in a kangaroo court in Manhattan on trumped-up charges, even as the conflicted leftist judge presiding over the show trial ultimately sentenced Trump to no penalty. 

“This has been a weaponization of government — they call it lawfare — never happened to any extent like this, but never happened in our country before,” Trump said following the judge’s impotent “sentence,” just days before the president’s inauguration. “It’s an injustice of justice.”

The same people who warned that Trump and the Republicans who backed him were a threat to democracy desperately tried to remove the GOP’s most popular candidate for president from the ballot. That lawfare stunt ultimately failed badly, when the U.S. Supreme Court in a unanimous ruling found the Democrats’ undemocratic action unconstitutional. 

Throughout the past four years, the left’s lawfare strategy has been about politically crippling and bankrupting the billionaire businessman so that he could no longer pose a threat to their power. With each arrest, each mug shot, each indictment, each star chamber, Trump emerged stronger in the polls. Americans saw through the banana republic games the left was playing. That fact was a small miracle, given the corporate media were all in on the games, outright interfering in the 2024 election. 

‘God Saved This Guy’

The drive to stop Trump at all costs took a deadly turn at a warm July evening campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, where a would-be assassin slipped through the criminally incompetent watch of the U.S. Secret Service and fired off several shots at the Republican presidential candidate and supporters. Trump was hit in the ear, narrowly escaping a mortal wounding. Corey Comperatore, a rallygoer, was killed in the attack, and two others were seriously injured. 

Blood streaming down his face, Trump stood up on that rally stage and urged Americans to “Fight! Fight! Fight!” That iconic moment, the ultimate symbol of Trump’s indomitable spirit, may very well have sealed his victory in November. I was at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee just two days later. The feeling of a guiding hand of providence was palpable in the building, particularly as Trump surprised the crowd and showed up with a bandaged ear on the first night of the convention. 

“Honestly, I’m telling you that God saved this guy,” Nirmal Paul, a delegate from New York, told me above the din of the convention floor at the Fiserv Forum, home of the NBA’s Milwaukee Bucks in downtown Milwaukee. 

“I think he was protected by God,” Paul said, gravely adding, “One inch, he’s done.” 

That’s a sentiment shared by a lot of Americans who these days are feeling delivered from four long years of incompetence and corruption and cover-ups in their federal government. Undoubtedly, the deep failures of the Biden administration — crippling inflation, an invasion of our border, leftist identity politics injected into every aspect of life — had a lot to do with the left’s deep losses in November. 

But the guy who fought like hell to reclaim American greatness, the former president whom Democrats declared a threat to democracy, has survived everything the left has dished out to preserve this nearly 250-year-old democratic republic. 

You could say providence had something to do with this “Liberation Day.” Trump definitely does.

“National Unity is now returning to America, and confidence and pride is soaring like never before. In everything we do, my administration will be inspired by a strong pursuit of excellence and unrelenting success,” Trump said in his inaugural speech. “We will not forget our country. We will not forget our Constitution. And we will not forget our God.”

Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.