President Trump dialed into “Fox & Friends” on Tuesday morning 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. Rarer still is any acknowledgment from him of 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 October. “I’m not 100 percent sure about my father, but it’s close.”
At the White House briefing later on 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.”
Shawn McCreesh is a White House reporter for The Times covering the Trump administration.
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