Donald Trump takes religious turn as he tells Fox & Friends ‘I want to try and get to Heaven’

President Donald Trump dialled into “Fox & Friends” on Tuesday morning, local time, and revealed his newest and truest motivation for brokering an end to the war in Ukraine: He’s worried he might not get into heaven after he dies.

“I want to try and get to heaven, if possible,” he explained. “I’m hearing I’m not doing well. I am really at the bottom of the totem pole. But if I can get to heaven, this will be one of the reasons.”

Holy mother of God! What a thing to say at 8 o’clock in the morning.

This would have been a highly unusual admission from any president, but it seemed especially out of character coming from this one. The man who is regarded as a messiah by many of his own supporters — a belief he has encouraged at every turn — says now that he knows he’s no saint.

This fear of perdition raised some questions. Chief among them: Who, exactly, has been informing the president that he is “not doing well” with regard to kingdom come? Did Michael the Archangel somehow get Mr Trump’s cellphone number?

It is rare to hear Mr Trump say something so soul-searchingly self-deprecating, which this surely was. He has talked often about his brush with death last summer and how he felt it changed him, but it is otherwise uncommon to hear him acknowledge his own mortality. He is old — 79, to be exact — and does not ever want to be reminded of that fact.

“You know, there’s a certain point at which you don’t want to hear ‘Happy Birthday,’” he said when he turned 78. “You just want to pretend the day doesn’t exist.”

He also said then: “My father lived a long time, my mother lived a long time, and they were happy, and they were great. So maybe we’re going to live a long time. I hope so.”

Mr Trump’s memories of his parents have stirred thoughts of heaven and hell in him in the past. After he was convicted on 34 felony counts, he talked at rallies about what his parents must be thinking. “Now my beautiful parents are up in heaven, I think they are,” he said at one rally. “They’re up there, looking down. They say, ‘How did this happen to my son?’”

But other times he confessed he was not so sure his father made it past the pearly gates.

“I know my mother’s in heaven,” he said at a Madison Square Garden rally in New York City in October. “I’m not 100 per cent sure about my father, but it’s close.”

At the White House briefing later Tuesday, Karoline Leavitt, the press secretary, was asked if Mr Trump was joking when he talked about going to heaven, or if “there was a spiritual motivation behind his peace deals.”

“I think the president was serious,” Ms Leavitt said. “I think the president wants to get to heaven — as I hope we all do in this room as well.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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