President Trump said he “cannot” forgive his enemies and never would — even if doing so would shut him out of Heaven.
The commander-in-chief said he’d rather languish in purgatory than forgive his foes after being posed the hypothetical in a “60 Minutes” interview with correspondent Ross Douthat Sunday.
The question was raised by Douthat, who initially asked Trump if he thought he’d go to heaven when he died.
“I hope so,” a solemn Trump told Douthat. “I don’t want to go to hell.”
The interviewer then switched the conversation to a statement Trump made at the funeral for slain right-wing political activist Charlie Kirk.
Douthat recalled Trump’s half-joke at the memorial, where he said “I hate my opponents and don’t want the best for them” – a sentiment at odds with widow Erika Kirk’s message of forgiveness.
The journalist then posed Trump the afterlife hypothetical.
“[A]ll you have to do to enter paradise is feel love and forgiveness for [former FBI director] James Comey, [former Speaker of the House] Nancy Pelosi, anyone who you have expressed hate for over the years. Do you think you can do it?” he asked.
The president said he finds those named to be “extremely dishonest people, very bad people, very bad for our country,” before Douthat asked him if the answer to the question is “no.”
“The answer is no,” Trump said. “I want to be honest.”
When Douthat raised the stakes, saying that in this scenario he’d be denying those who wronged him forgiveness before “the judgment throne of God,” Trump doubled down.
“Before the judgment, no. I think they were very bad people,” he said.
“I do hate some of my enemies. I think they’ve been terrible. Look what they’ve put me through, the weaponization. I got indicted. I got impeached,” Trump told Douthat.
Douthat then asked Trump how a man with “the most charmed and remarkable life of any American in my lifetime” can’t bring himself to forgive his enemies.
But the president was unfazed.
“I probably cannot do that, no, because I do hate some of my enemies and I always will,” Trump said.
