President Trump Asked About Heaven in 60 Minutes Interview
Does President Donald Trump believe he’s going to Heaven when he dies?
Over the years, versions of that question have been posed to the 45th and 47th chief executive – most recently this past week during an interview with Ross Douthat for CBS’s 60 Minutes.
Douthat was blunt and direct in asking President Trump, “What do you think happens when you die?”
Smiling and chuckling, the president replied, “Well, I hope I’m missed.” But Douthat pressed. “I mean to you,” he continued. “What do you think happens to Donald Trump when you die?”
“You mean where I go?” Trump clarified. “Exactly,” replied the 60 Minutes correspondent.
“Well, I’m a religious person, so in theory I go to Heaven,” he replied.
“Do you think you’re going to Heaven?” Douthat followed up.
“I hope so,” Mr. Trump told him. “I don’t want to go to Hell.”
During a meeting with evangelical leaders in 2016, then-candidate Trump joked that becoming president might well be “the only way I’m going to get to Heaven. So, I better do a good job.”
During an interview on Fox & Friends in 2025, President Trump said wryly, “I want to try to get to Heaven, if possible.” He added, “I’m hearing I’m not doing well. I am really at the bottom of the totem pole.” He then speculated on Todd Starnes’ radio show there must be “some kind of a report card up there someplace.”
A few months later while talking with reporters aboard Air Force One, President Trump said with sarcasm, “I don’t think there’s anything going to get me in Heaven.” At the National Prayer Breakfast in February, though, he was leaning in the opposite direction. “I really think I probably should make it,” he told those gathered. “I mean, I’m not a perfect candidate, but I did a [expletive] of a lot of good.”
The Rev. Franklin Graham, who heads up both Samaritan’s Purse and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, has previously reached out to his friend Trump in a letter to share his perspective as a minister. The president released the private correspondence.
“We don’t get to Heaven by good works, but by the perfect work of God’s Son, Jesus Christ,” Graham wrote. “We all have the promise of eternal life if we repent of our sins, trust Him by faith, and make Him the Lord of our lives. That’s how one gets to Heaven—not by our good works, but by His.”
After the 60 Minutes interview aired, Franklin Graham posted on X:
Heaven has borders. Heaven has unique and very strict entrance requirements. To enter Heaven, the Bible tells us that you must acknowledge your sins, turn from them in repentance, and receive Jesus Christ by faith. That means believe that Jesus Christ is God’s Son, that He paid the penalty for your sins by dying on a cross, was buried in a tomb, raised to life on the third day, and walked out of that tomb. He’s alive! If you put your trust in Jesus Christ, you will be in God’s presence for eternity. Religion can’t save you – only a relationship with the Savior, Jesus Christ, can save you. Do you have that assurance?
During the interview with Douthat, President Trump was also asked whether he could or would forgive his enemies in exchange for entrance into Heaven.
“Let’s say you pass away, you’re entering the next life, and all you have to do to enter paradise is feel love and forgiveness for James Comey, Nancy Pelosi, anyone who you have expressed hate for over the years,” Douthat asked. “Do you think you can do it?”
The president said he neither could not nor would not forgive.
“The answer is ‘no,’” he replied. “I want to be honest. I think they [his enemies] were very bad people and I dislike, I can use the word ‘hate,’ I do hate some of my enemies. They’ve been terrible. Look what they’ve put me through, the weaponization.”
Ross Douthat’s framing is preposterous and hypothetical, of course. Salvation is based on our faith in Jesus Christ, but a believer’s ability to forgive their enemy is a glimpseinto the condition of their heart. It’s a serious and consequential matter. Christians and non-Christians alike struggle to forgive their enemies – but Jesus’ own words suggest forgiveness for believers isn’t optional.
“For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you,” Jesus said. “But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins” (Matthew 6:14-15).
President Trump’s ongoing willingness to say what he’s thinking in a seemingly unfiltered manner has catapulted eternal matters of deep importance into the national conversation. Reporters are posing questions of Heaven to the president – and Franklin Graham and others are wisely using the opportunity to ask the same of those within their spheres of influence.
Heaven is a real place. It’s not a punch line. Instead, it should be where we want to go at the end of our life. Thanks to the national media and ministers of the Gospel, it’s a subject that demands an answer – one Scripture makes abundantly clear: Our eternal destination hinges not on what we have done, but on what Christ has done for us.
