Former President Donald Trump recently sat down for an interview with the famous podcaster Lex Fridman, during which the two discussed religion. During the conversation, Trump contended with mortality while calling for a religious revival in the United States, pointing out, “Without religion, there’s not real guardrails.”
Fridman sparked the conversation, bringing up the inevitability of death. “One of the tragic things about life is that it ends. How often do you think about your death? Are you afraid of it?” he asked. Trump replied that he had a friend who would obsess over the topic of death.
“He said, ‘I think about it every minute of every day,'” Trump said, speaking about his friend. “Then, a week later, he called me to tell me something, and he started off the conversation by going, ‘Tick-tock, tick-tock.’ This is a dark person, in a sense, but it is what it is.”
Trump then pivoted to discussing how religious beliefs impact one’s view of death. “If you’re religious, I think you have a better feeling about it. You’re supposed to go to Heaven ideally, not Hell, but you’re supposed to go to Heaven if you’re good,” he noted.
The former president pointed out the role religion serves in society, emphasizing that, without it, culture can become disorganized. “Our country is missing a lot of religion,” he continued. “I think it really was a much better place with religion. It was almost a guide. You want to be good to people. Without religion, there’s no real guardrails. I’d love to see us get back to religion, more religion in this country.”
While Trump spoke broadly about religion from a utilitarian perspective in this interview and didn’t necessarily indicate a having faith in Jesus Christ, he has been very vocal about his belief in God following the failed assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July. Trump came face-to-face with death at the event as a bullet grazed his ear, very nearly killing him.
The American Tribune reported on recent comments from former President Trump regarding his faith regarding the assassination attempt. He told Fox News host, Mark Levin, “Well, I think you believe more because when you speak to experts, like my sons who are shooting experts, but when you speak to experts, they said there was no chance that he could have missed from that distance. I think he was hurried. I think he was rushed because people were starting to say, like, you know, there’s a guy up there with a gun. And I think he was probably rushed.”
Trump further added that God might have spared his life because he has unfinished business in restoring America. “And somebody said like, why — and I’d like to think that God thinks that I’m going to straighten out our country. Our country is so sick and it’s so broken. Our country is just broken. And maybe that was the reason — I don’t know, I don’t know. A lot of people have said that.”
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