House Speaker Mike Johnson likened former President Donald Trump to “bulletproof George Washington” Monday, while insisting that the Republican nominee’s survival of multiple assassination attempts was “not luck.”
Johnson, 52, and his wife Kelly met with Trump, 78, at Mar-a-Lago shortly after a Secret Service agent opened fire on alleged would-be assassin Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, near the 6th hole of the Trump International Golf Club West Palm Beach on Sunday.
“It is something that no one can deny, God has spared his life twice now,” Johnson (R-La.) reflected on “Fox & Friends.”
“I told him that it reminded me of the bulletproof George Washington, our first president, who evaded being shot when he was an army colonel — the famous incident in the French and American Indian War, where they all took shots at him and bullet holes went through his jacket and didn’t take him down.”
The House speaker was referencing the Battle of the Monongahela during the French and Indian War, when Washington — then a colonel in the British-allied colonial Virginia Militia — had two horses shot out from under him while four bullets whizzed through his coat on July 9, 1755.
In a letter to his brother John written nine days after the battle, Washington attributed his survival to “the all-powerful dispensations of Providence,” which he said had “protected [him] beyond all human probability and expectation … altho’ death was levelling my companions on every side.”
Johnson noted that the Battle of Monongahela took place near present-day Braddock, Pa., “less than 50 miles” from where Trump was shot and wounded by a would-be assassin during a campaign rally in Butler, Pa. July 13.
“These things are not accidents. It’s not luck. I believe it’s Providence and we talked about that. It’s a remarkable thing. It would move any man’s heart,” Johnson told Fox News Monday.
“It’s just something he’s processing right now.”
The top House Republican recounted that Trump was “in very good spirits” when the two met following the security scare.
“He is so resilient and [I was] really grateful to see him,” Johnson said. “I said this, and we will all be talking about this for quite some time, there is no leader in the history of America that has been so attacked and remained so strong and so resilient. He is one of a kind.”
Routh was arraigned Monday in West Palm Beach federal court on two weapons charges, possessing a firearm as a convicted felon and possessing a firearm with an obliterated serial number.
A criminal complaint revealed that a phone number associated with Routh was tracked in the “vicinity of the area” where the shooting took place between 1:59 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. Sunday.
Routh is next due to appear in court for a bond hearing on Sept. 23.
