In the aftermath of the 2024 assassination attempt on Donald Trump, his longtime pastor has offered a rare and candid insight into how the experience reshaped the President’s understanding of faith, survival and divine purpose.
Speaking to GB News during a Shrove Tuesday discussion on Christianity in Britain, Pastor Mark Burns of the Harvest Praise and Worship Centre in South Carolina was asked whether the near-fatal shooting had made the President a more spiritual man.
“He knows, without a shadow of doubt, that the hand of God was - is - upon his life,” Burns said.
The pastor described the moment not as luck or coincidence, but as divine intervention.
“It was the hand of God that moved that bullet just sheer millimetres” away from the President’s head, he added.
The attack took place on 13 July 2024 as Mr Trump campaigned at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Twenty-year-old Thomas Crooks fired eight rounds from a semi-automatic rifle.
One bullet grazed the President’s ear, while another killed audience member Corey Comperatore.
Images of Mr Trump moments later, blood visible on his face as he raised his fist and shouted “fight, fight, fight”, quickly went viral worldwide.
Burns suggested the nation had narrowly avoided witnessing a far greater tragedy. “That was what we were supposed to witness: a JFK part two, live on television,” he said.
Reflecting on the personal impact of the attempt, the evangelical pastor said the experience had profoundly altered the President’s spiritual outlook. “So when you talk about: ‘Is he more spiritual?’ 100 per cent,” Burns said.
The pastor has since thrown his support behind a project to memorialise the moment in the form of a 22-foot statue depicting the President raising his fist after being shot.
“This group of American patriots has come together, raised the funds themselves, and they’re going to be dedicating this beautiful statue,” Pastor Burns said.
Cast in bronze and finished with gold leaf, the statue is set to be installed in Doral, Florida, home to one of Mr Trump’s golf resorts.
“It symbolises when he was shot in the ear and how he defiantly raised his fist with the blood coming down the side of his face, telling the whole world ‘fight, fight, fight’,” the pastor added.
White House schedulers are reported to be “actively looking” for a date when the President can attend the statue’s official unveiling. For many believers in the United States and elsewhere, Donald Trump is regarded as divinely appointed to serve as President and leader of the free world.
Trump made $300,000 (£273,000) during the year of his assassination attempt from a range of bespoke Bibles.
