U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to the media before departing for a state visit to Britain, at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., September 16, 2025. REUTERS/Ken Cedeno
During his second presidency, Donald Trump has been making a lot of humorous comments about the afterlife — often with a favorable response from his far-right white evangelical base.
Many evangelicals love it when Trump makes comments like "I think I'm not maybe heaven-bound" and "I'm not sure I'm going to be able to make heaven" — which, they say, really shows his humanity. Although Trump is a billionaire, quite a few white evangelicals contend, he isn't afraid to admit that he's a sinner just like them.
But journalist Will Saletan, in an article published by the conservative website The Bulwark, has a very different take on Trump's "heaven" comments.
Saletan argues that when "narcissist" Trump talks about religion, his comments are self-serving and underscore the fact that to Trump, anything and everything is about him.
"He envisions his parents in the afterlife — speculating that they 'made heaven,' as though it's an elite college or a country club — but the point of the story is always that 'they're looking down on me," Saletan observes. "Trump is a narcissist. He's interested in God only as an endorser, benefactor, or tool in his own career. He suggests that God helped him win the presidential elections in 2016 and 2024. He says if God, instead of those cheating Democrats, were to count the ballots, Trump would win California, too."
Saletan continues, "As to the 2020 election, which Trump still insists was stolen, he says that, too, was part of God's plan. Speaking last month to the White House Religious Liberty Commission, he gloated, 'You had some very bad people who rigged an election, and look what happened: I end up getting the Olympics, the World Cup, and the 250th anniversary of the United States. It's amazing the way God works, isn't it? It's amazing.'"
The Bulwark journalist laments that to Trump, "altruism" is "a baffling, alien concept he associates with 'suckers' and 'losers.'"
"Trump never sounds like he really believes in this afterlife," Saletan observes. "But the possibility of it — and the knowledge that at 79, he's running out of other options —clearly weighs on him."
Will Saletan's full article for The Bulwark is available at this link.