Is Donald Trump now unstoppable?

‘You’re gonna be so blessed,’ said Pastor James Roemke, doing a pretty good Donald Trump impersonation in the warm-up to his Benediction of the Republican National Convention on Monday. ‘You’re gonna be tired of being blessed, I guarantee it, believe me.’ Sitting in the stands with a bandage on his ear, Trump enjoyed the joke – a riff on his famous line from 2016 about ‘winning’. He smiled almost beatifically for the cameras.

It was poignant, too, because in his case it seemed so true: God, or some supernatural force beyond our understanding, does seem to be showering the Republican nominee with blessings of late.

Hours earlier, a Florida judge had dismissed the US Justice Department’s case against Trump for hoarding classified documents, a major victory for his legal team. That news came just two days after he somehow survived – ‘by God or by luck’, as he put it – the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Corey Comperatore, a former volunteer fire chief in the crowd, was less fortunate: he was shot and killed, heroically protecting his wife. Nonetheless, a huge number of voters understandably regard Trump’s escape as miraculous. For those of an evangelical temper, who believe in the Donald and worship the Almighty, it seems as if the latter is at last revealing His great plan to put the former back in the White House by 2025.

As a result, at the convention this week, Trump is not simply being nominated as the Republican candidate in 2024. He’s being anointed as America’s Chosen One. ‘I have no doubt that God lowered a shield of protection over President Trump,’ is how the former presidential candidate Ben Carson put it. Countless others expressed the same sentiment. ‘When we get the president walking in it’s like God Almighty walking in,’ said one delegate.