If it takes a miracle for Trump to stay in office, evangelicals like Michele Bachmann are fine with that

As the inevitability of President Trump’s loss became apparent even to his acolyte Kellyanne Conway in recent days, his supporters increasingly pinned their hopes for a second term on a last-ditch appeal, not to the Supreme Court, but to the one power that can outvote it: God.

It has long been an article of faith among right-wing evangelicals that Republicans were the party of God, while Democrats were on, well, the other side, succinctly identified by Franklin Graham as “almost a demonic power.” The inescapable conclusion of televangelist Pat Robertson followed: “Without question” — and also without polling — “Trump is going to win the election.” After the election, the “Friendly Atheist” blog posted a 24-minute video of prophecies of Trump’s certain victory, which assorted preachers passed along, having heard it directly from God himself. “So God said to me, in November, there is going to be an overwhelming number of white liberals who talk like they hate the president publicly, but in the secrecy of the ballot box, God says, I’m gonna work a miracle,” predicted Francis Myles, senior pastor of the Lovefest Church in Tempe, Ariz. “I’m gonna cause the eunuchs to throw off the spirit of Jezebel and they are going to vote massively for the president.”

It is in the nature of prophecy that it can never be disproven by empirical events, so when the Associated Press proclaimed Biden the winner of the election, that didn’t change many minds on the evangelical (or, for that matter, the secular) right. Michele Bachmann, the former Republican congresswoman from Minnesota who made a brief run for president in 2012, was especially eloquent on this score, posting a video on Nov. 9 calling on God to use his “strong iron rod” to “smash the delusion” that Biden had won the election, along with several other political developments she found disconcerting, such as the Democrats retaining control of the House of Representatives and the possibility that the two U.S. Senate runoff elections in Georgia could put Democratic leader Chuck Schumer in control of the Senate.