President Donald Trump has disclosed one of his motivations for brokering worldwide peace treaties during his second term as president: everlasting salvation.
During a phone interview with Fox & Friends on Tuesday, August 19, the president provided a new reason for taking action to stop the conflict in Ukraine, including placing himself as a mediator between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
“If I can save 7,000 people a week from being killed, I think that’s pretty– I want to try to get to heaven if possible,” Mr. Trump remarked.
“I am hearing that I am not performing well. I am truly at the bottom of the totem pole,” he concluded, eliciting laughs from the Fox News anchors. “But if I can get to heaven, this will be one of the reasons.”
During her briefing later that day, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt stressed that she did not think Trump was kidding.
“I think the president was serious,” she remarked. “I think the president wants to get to heaven—as I hope we all do in this room as well.”
Positioning himself as a “mediator in chief” has been one of Trump’s primary goals in his second term. He boasted to Zelenskyy at their meeting on Monday, Aug. 18, that he was responsible for “six deals” in various global disputes this year alone.
Trump and his administration claim to have helped settle disputes between Israel and Iran, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda, Cambodia and Thailand, India and Pakistan, Serbia and Kosovo, and Egypt and Ethiopia as part of their efforts to broker peace between Russia and Ukraine.
In addition, according to The Guardian, “the claim to have settled those conflicts is embellished and in some cases contradicted by continued violence in countries like DR Congo, where Rwanda-backed rebels missed a deadline to reach a peace deal in Doha on Tuesday.”
Trump’s intention to coerce Putin also appears to have been overblown. During their meeting in Alaska on August 15, the two failed to establish a peace settlement or commit to a ceasefire, despite Trump’s vague warning of “very severe consequences” if Russia did not comply.
Days after meeting with Putin, Trump shifted his position, telling Zelenskyy and other European officials that he did not believe a cease-fire between Russia and Ukraine was necessary or even practicable while bigger peace talks were continuing.
During his speech at the Kennedy Center on August 13, the president conceded that dealing with Putin was challenging.
“I’ve had many good conversations with [Putin]. “Then I go home and find that a missile has struck a nursing home or an apartment building, and people are dead on the streets,” Trump added.
Before Trump stated that he is “hearing” that he is not on the route to heaven, South Park’s controversial new episodes took a stand on the president’s chances for redemption.
After previously stating that South Park would avoid commenting on Trump’s second term, creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker changed their minds, even showing a fictionalized version of the president cuddling in bed with Satan during the highly anticipated season 27 premiere.
In the episode, the enormous red monster, who is regularly represented in South Park as a sensitive soul, repeatedly compares Trump to a “guy he used to date,” whom faithful viewers know is none other than Saddam Hussein.