Key points
- I’m “at bottom of totem pole”: Trump
- The president wants to get to heaven: Karoline Leavitt
ISLAMABAD: President Trump phoned into Fox & Friends and revealed a surprising reason for wanting to end the war in Ukraine: he’s concerned about his chances of getting into heaven.
“I want to try and get to heaven, if possible,” he said. “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,” reports The New York Times.
Africans are rising up against the flawed world map that distorts the true size of their continent, making some Western countries appear larger than the entire African continent.
The African Union is backing a campaign to replace the widely used 16th-century Mercator map with a… pic.twitter.com/8DGKgBs3Ck
— TRT Afrika (@trtafrika) August 15, 2025
Such a statement would be unusual from any president, but especially from Trump, who is often treated like a messianic figure by many supporters — a perception he has encouraged. Now, he appears to recognise he is far from saintly.
His remarks raised questions. Who exactly has been telling him he is not “doing well” when it comes to heaven? Has he received divine feedback?
Expressing self-awareness
Trump rarely expresses such self-awareness. While he has previously mentioned how a health scare last summer affected him, he typically avoids discussing his own mortality.
At 79, he’s made jokes about ageing. Upon turning 78, he said, “There’s a certain point where you don’t want to hear ‘Happy Birthday’. You just want to pretend the day doesn’t exist.”
He has also publicly reflected on his parents and the afterlife. After being convicted on 34 felony charges, he said at rallies that his parents must be looking down from heaven — though he seemed more confident about his mother’s presence there. “I know my mother’s in heaven,” he told a crowd at Madison Square Garden. “I’m not 100 per cent sure about my father, but it’s close.”
When asked if the president was joking, press secretary Karoline Leavitt said he was serious. “The president wants to get to heaven — as I hope we all do,” she told reporters.
