(CP) Former President Donald Trump credited God for sparing his life from an assassin’s bullet and insisted that he would win California if Jesus was the “vote counter.”
Trump, the Republican nominee for president, sat down with talk show host Dr. Phil McGraw for an interview on his television program “Dr. Phil Primetime” posted on YouTube Tuesday. McGraw began the conversation by bringing up the July 13 assassination attempt against the candidate, where a bullet grazed his ear as he spoke at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
After McGraw explained to Trump that “experts said, frankly, you mustn’t be here without delay” and “experts said a kill shot was almost a certainty, but yet here you sit,” McGraw pressed the previous president on whether he had asked himself, “How am I here and why am I here?” Trump responded by addressing the “big luck” he experienced on the rally, which enabled him to survive.
“The big thing was the turn,” he said. “It needed to be an ideal 90-degree turn or … I would not be with you today. And I needed to be something to the appropriate.”
Acknowledging the “massive crowds” on the event, Trump described how “they were in front” and “there was no reason to be trying to the appropriate.” The former president also highlighted the presence of what he called his “all-time favorite graph” documenting illegal immigration statistics on the rally, telling McGraw that he typically uses it about 20% of the time and that when he does, “it is usually at the tip” of his speeches and at all times positioned to his left as a substitute of his right.
Trump also discussed how the graph was featured at first of his speech on the Butler rally. In response to McGraw’s query, “Why were you spared?” Trump replied, “There needed to be some great power” as he reflected on the low odds of his surviving the situation he found himself in. “The only thing I can think [of] is that God loves our country and He thinks we will bring our country back; He desires to bring it back.”
“It needs to be God,” he added. “How are you able to say it’s luck when it’s … 20 million to 1?”
Trump answered within the affirmative when McGraw posited, “Do you suspect God’s hand was on this that day?” McGraw also inquired as as to if Trump believes he has “more to do, you are not done, you were spared for a reason?” To which Trump asserted, “God believes that, I assume.”
Outlining the substitute of presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden with Vice President Kamala Harris and the difficulties related to this development within the race, Trump contended that if he won the 2024 presidential election, “That would really serve to say that there is an incredible power up there that wanted me to be involved in saving and perhaps it’s greater than saving the nation, perhaps it’s saving the world.”
After Trump elaborated on the issues facing the world, McGraw asked if he was “meant to take those challenges on” and “meant to serve in that way.” The former president replied, “I do not know,” adding, “It’s beyond any of us, I assume, to essentially know that.”
The exchange in regards to the assassination attempt concluded with Trump implying that the proven fact that the bullet went “along that path and hit the highest of my ear versus another place” may need been divine intervention.
In one other portion of the interview, Trump recalled how he decided that “there isn’t any way I could lose California” after giving a speech there with a crowd that “was so big.” But he lamented, “routinely, they mark it down if you happen to’re a Republican, as a loss.”
Reacting to the finding that he lost the state by 5 million votes, Trump told McGraw, “I guarantee if Jesus got here down and was the vote counter, I might win California,” clarifying that he merely meant that “if we had an honest vote counter, a extremely honest vote counter,” he would win the state.
California is amongst essentially the most Democratic states in presidential elections. As Trump highlighted within the interview, he lost the state by a margin of roughly 5 million votes and 29 percentage points within the 2020 presidential election. Four years earlier, the previous president lost the state by a margin of greater than 4 million votes and 30 percentage points.
In light of its status as a Democratic bastion, polling for the 2024 presidential election in California is proscribed. However, a survey of three,765 likely California voters conducted by the Institute of Governmental Studies on the University of California, Berkeley between July 31 and Aug. 11 shows Harris beating Trump 59% to 34%.
