“I wanna try and get to heaven if possible. I’m hearing I’m not doing well… I am really at the bottom of the totem pole. But if I can get to heaven, this will be one of the reasons.” —Donald Trump, discussing his efforts to end the war in Ukraine during an August 19 interview with Fox & Friends.
It’s the most self-reflective thing I’ve ever heard from the president, a surprising admission that, for all the braggadocio, all the anger, all the denials of any wrong-doing ever, something human still beats in that Grinchian heart. That small something is telling him what the rest of us already know—the dude sucks. He has always sucked. That if there’s any karmic justice in this world, Hell is having the red carpet steam cleaned in anticipation of it being rolled out for a very special new resident.
So did Trump accidentally spill the beans on his condition during that otherwise softball interview? Is the current flurry of incoherent domestic and international activity, prolific even by Trumpian standards, a buzzer-beating effort to get right with the Lord?
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If so, let me speak on behalf of our Heavenly Father—it ain’t working, kid.
There’s been a lot of speculation on the state of Trump’s physical well-being in recent weeks and months—but in particular since the White House released a statement about his diagnosis of chronic venous insufficiency. There’s been the terrible bruising on the President’s hands, which the White House attempted to explain away by saying it was from too much vigorous hand-shaking. So why was it also on his left hand?
And when the famously loquacious Trump dropped out of the public eye for several days last week—sans a few dubious photographs of him on his way to a golf course, looking wan and even more bloated than usual—the internet went bonkers. Did his ticker blow up? Did he have a Diet Coke brain bleed?
Well, Trump addressed the questions about his health during Tuesday’s Oval Office press conference. “I was very active this Labor Day,” he told reporters. It’s also possible he was planning his imminent invasion of Chicago. Who knows what he was up to? What matters is where we’re going.
A lifetime of greed, grifting, lying, cheating, stealing, sexual assaulting and just being an all-around tool is not going to get offset by ham-handed efforts to get your bestie Putin to lay down his arms. Not to mention end the Gazan ethnic cleansing occurring with your blessing. Or save all the Americans who will be denied life-saving vaccines and locked out of cancer trials because RFK Jr. took the red pill to cure his brain worm instead of, you know, actual medicine.
There’s also the small matter of blowing ships out of Venezuelan waters, holding North Korea style military parades in his honor, constructing ghoulish mega-prisons and renaming the Department of Defense the Department of War. Does a man facing his own demise rage, rage against the dying of the light by sending American troops into American cities?
I’m not a religious man, but I like to think that a good death reveals us to ourselves. A good death, one which we know is coming and for which we have time to prepare, can be a beautiful celebration of a life well-lived or a bruising indictment of a life squandered.
Donald Trump is a billionaire, a twice-elected President of the United States, and one of the most famous people on the planet. And yet, by any metric that matters when evaluating what really matters in this life, the dude is a stone cold loser.
When we are faced with our imminent deaths—or even ‘just’ reminded of our mortality—I can only imagine the thoughts running through most people’s minds have to do with the love they shared and the desire to make amends with those we believe we have wronged.
Is that what Trump is trying to do? If so, he’s doing about as good a job of it as he does with everything else. Even if he lives another eighty years, there isn’t enough time for him right his wrongs.
Nor do I believe he will be especially mourned by those closest to him. Can you really imagine Melania sobbing Jackie O-style at her husband’s combo funeral/fund-raiser? Sure, Eric might squeeze out a tear or two, but only because his dad never told him the combination to the safe in Trump Tower. Ivanka will show up in a perfectly-tailored black number to deliver the staff-written eulogy and (poorly) tip the delivery drivers dropping off McNuggets for the wake.
Will Tiffany even be invited?
And it gives me so much joy to know that Trump is well aware of the woefulness of his own condition. “The bottom of the totem pole,” he said, describing the state of his soul. Which means he knows that he spent his life chasing all the wrong things.
Doing the wrong things.
Hanging out with the wrong people, some of whom like his best friend of 15 years, Jeffrey Epstein, will no doubt be waiting with open arms to welcome him to the land down under. Roy Cohn will gift him a poison-tipped pitchfork. And, who knows, maybe Rudy Giuliani will beat him there, bearing a celebratory box of Just for Men as a homecoming gift.
To be clear, I don’t wish anybody ill. I don’t wish a difficult diagnosis for the president. I’m just saying, if they’re handing out difficult diagnoses, I will accept him as a worthy recipient. When the end does come, as it does for us all, may he reap exactly what he sowed. And may that reaping be grim.
