Republicans say Trump was ‘ordained by God’ after the shooting. Pa. Democrats warn he’ll make himself ‘king.’

MILWAUKEE — The refrain at the Pennsylvania delegate’s breakfast on Tuesday was divine intervention.

“It’s a profound thing, to have been ordained by God to lead the greatest nation in the history of the world for a second time,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) told Pennsylvania delegates in a hotel conference room on the morning of the Republican National Convention’s second day.

“President Trump was saved for a higher purpose for when we reelect him as our commander in chief,” said U.S. Rep. Glenn “GT” Thompson (R., Pa.,).

The rhetoric coming out of the Republican National Convention this week is that God saved former President Donald Trump from the bullet that narrowly missed killing him in Butler, Pa. And as Republicans here have blamed the shooting on Democratic campaign attacks, they also subtly shamed President Joe Biden’s party away from continuing to criticize the Republican nominee — though such criticism is a standard campaign practice.

The assassination attempt against Trump, which killed a firefighter from Western Pennsylvania and wounded Trump and two attendees, initially quieted Democratic campaigning and put the party’s political rhetoric under scrutiny.

But now, with Biden returning to the campaign trail Tuesday, his party is resuming its political offensive with a focus on the stark policy differences between the candidates.

“I don’t want to see him hurt, but I also don’t want to see him be king,” state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta (D., Philadelphia) said at a news conference in Philadelphia on Tuesday where Pennsylvania Democrats gathered at a Harris-BIden campaign office to offer some counter-programing to the torrent of news coming out of the RNC.

Mustafa Rashed, a Democratic strategist, said Democrats’ ability to get back on message following the shooting will be critical. Polls show Biden narrowly trailing Trump in Pennsylvania, a crucial swing state, before the assassination attempt on the former president.

“This is probably going into the third week of Democrats not being able to stay on message,” Rashed said, noting Biden’s woes after last month’s debate. “After the debate they haven’t been able to talk about the substantive differences between these two candidates.”

Democrats have built a campaign around defining Trump as a threat to democracy who must be defeated.

Trump refused to accept his 2020 electoral loss and was impeached in his final days in office for inciting the Jan. 6 Capitol attack. Trump has promised to pardon Jan. 6 rioters and last year said on Fox News that he would be a dictator on just the first day of his second presidency.

But after the assassination attempt, using fear of Trump as a motivator is a more complicated campaign challenge.

”My fellow Pennsylvanians, we are on the verge of a dictatorship,” state Rep. Danilo Burgos said at the Biden-Harris event Tuesday.

While each speaker at the Biden campaign event in Philadelphia’s Brewerytown condemned political violence, they also did not hold back warnings of danger if Trump were to win a second term.

The speakers largely focused on the details of Project 2025, a set of conservative policy proposals spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation. Though Trump has sought to distance himself from the document — which was crafted with input from former Trump administration officials — Democrats have insisted it will serve as a roadmap for his second term.

Such a reality, they argue, would result in the loss of America’s social safety net, diminished rights for women and LGBTQ Americans, and mass deportations.

In the wake of Saturday’s shooting in Butler County, Republicans have argued that this rhetoric from Democrats helped set the stage for violence against Trump — insisting that Democrats have become too personal in their attacks of the Republican Party.

But the Democrats gathered in Philly on Tuesday rejected that premise, noting that little is known about the motives of the shooter, a 20-year-old registered Republican. They also referenced gun control measures that could have made the shooting less likely.

”I think it’s absolutely disingenuous to hear this sort of both sides-ism and say that, hey, we’ve got to tone down the rhetoric on both sides,” state Sen. Maria Collett said. “What we can do is look at the records of both of these individuals.”

Messaging following the shooting, Kenyatta argued, requires Democrats to unequivocally condemn political violence but to also remind voters of dangerous acts and rhetoric from Republicans, such as the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Condemning political violence, he said, does not mean Democrats stop talking about Trump as a threat to democracy.

“I want to see him lose an election like he lost the last time and what I want him to do is not encourage his supporters to go and storm the Capitol or to send threatening messages,” said Kenyatta, who is running for Pennsylvania auditor general.

Rashed, the Democratic strategist, said Democrats will have a harder time arguing that Trump is dangerous but that they absolutely have to.

“We are talking about the direction of the country for the next four years,” Rashed said. “President Trump has used, called on violence and called for violence as sort of part of how he does business. And so I think Democrats need to make that distinction.”

The challenge is that Trump, now the survivor of a shooting, is even more exalted by Republicans than before. The moment hasn’t just energized his core base but drawn in some previously more tepid Republicans, uniting the GOP.

When he made an unannounced visit to the arena in Milwaukee on Monday, Trump entered to deafening applause, like a hero returned from battle. Nearly every speech on the opening night mentioned or invoked the attempted assassination, energizing a base that already saw Trump as a god-like figure.

Oftentimes that rhetoric has waded into the apocalyptic.

“We know after last Saturday that we have the one who truly matters on our side,” Lara Trump told Pennsylvania delegates Tuesday. “It’s about good vs. evil. We are in a spiritual battle right now in this country.”