Trump chooses Hell over forgiveness in 60 Minutes interview

Trump admits he'd prefer eternal damnation to lying to God about forgiving political enemies in a new interview with 60 Minutes.

By Matt Schimkowitz  |  November 9, 2026 | 3:23pm
Courtesy of CBS
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Trump chooses Hell over forgiveness in 60 Minutes interview

After spending a decade at The New York Times offering the opinion section some of its most misguided and flat-out wrong ideas, 60 Minutes‘ Ross Douthat stumbled into a remarkable exchange with President Trump during his interview on the diminished news magazine last night. At the end of his hour-long interview with President Trump, Douthat offered the similarly diminished leader of the free world a softball question about forgiveness and eternity, only for the president to show the full depth of his hatred. Asking about Trump’s multiple assassination attempts and how that has altered his view of mortality, the devout Douthat asked, “What do you think happens when you die?” The exchange did not go as he expected. “Well, I hope I’m missed,” Trump responded. Hoping to get some human decency, instead of ceaseless vanity, out of a self-described “religious person” credibly accused of rape and who responded to the recent midterms shallacking by making known ideologue and aggressive bigot Stephen Miller his chief of staff, Douthat pushed further, “Do you think you’re going to heaven?” 

“Well, I hope so,” Trump said, “I don’t want to go to hell.”

This still wasn’t what Douthat wanted from Trump, so he did what very few in the Trump era do and followed up. “I watched you at Charlie Kirk’s memorial service. And Erica Kirk, his widow, got up, and gave some very moving remarks about Christian forgiveness, how you have to forgive your enemies and your opponents. And you followed her and you said, and I know this was a little bit of a joke, but I think facts come through jokes. You said, ‘I hate my opponents and I don’t want the best for them.’ 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, and anyone you have expressed hate for over the years. Do you think you could do it?” Trump, whose hatred for these people burns with the fire of a thousand suns, says he couldn’t because “I wouldn’t be real, would I?” 

Douthat pressed him further, leaving the impression that, stuck in his echo chamber at The New York Times and observing his political leaders from afar, the journalist did not realize how deeply hateful these characters were. “Mr. President, you have had the most charmed and remarkable life of any American in my entire lifetime, and you are telling me before the judgment throne of God, you couldn’t find it in your heart to forgive some of your enemies? After all that’s been given to you. Come on, help me out here.”

“Can I be honest?” Trump says. “I probably cannot do that because I do hate some of my enemies and I always will.”

One doesn’t have to hand it to Ross Douthat. But maybe one should feel sympathy for a man who devoted his life to proselytizing Christian beliefs through his commentary and criticism, only to realize, decades into his career, that the guys he believes will make America a Christian nation are so hateful they’ll take eternal damnation over finding reason to forgive the people who handed them their first presidential election. Or maybe you don’t have to feel sympathy. That wouldn’t be real, would it?

 
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