President Donald Trump has been talking about heaven a lot lately, the afterlife, goodness, and whether he will make the cut. “I think I’m not maybe heaven-bound,” he said recently. “I may be in heaven right now as we fly in Air Force One. I’m not sure I’m gonna be able to make heaven, but I’ve made life a lot better for a lot of people.”
In another conversation, he mused, “If you don’t have heaven, you almost say, ‘What’s the reason? Why do I have to be good?’” The comments, aired across friendly media hits and recap pieces, sketch a leader preoccupied with what comes next, and whether earthly achievements can buy a ticket upward.
Therapists call it death anxiety, also known as thanatophobia, a normal fear that spikes as people confront aging and loss. Clinical psychologist Rachel Menzies, co-author of Mortals, describes a common coping move, turning mortality into something we can influence with virtue or victories. “The idea that goodness or achievement can somehow protect us from the finality of death is believed by many,” she explained. “It’s often a way of managing the uncomfortable truth that mortality is outside our control, by turning it into something we can earn, influence or negotiate.”
If that sounds familiar, it tracks with Trump’s own framing. At times, he has linked big policy boasts to heavenly calculus, arguing that saving lives or delivering wins should count in the ultimate ledger. The theological logic is shaky, but the psychology is recognizable, especially in a political figure for whom self-worth is fused to conquest and applause. As Menzies and other researchers note, our culture teaches people to soothe existential dread by stacking up accomplishments, even when those accomplishments cannot touch what we fear most.
At 79, mortality is no longer an abstract. New York-based psychologist Cynthia Shaw, who specializes in existential concerns, tells clients that late-life reflection often brings heaven talk to the surface, a way to metabolize uncertainty about time left and meaning made. Her clinical focus is not sermonizing, it is helping patients confront dread more directly, naming the fear instead of outsourcing it to grand plans or grandstanding.
Therapist Gabrielle Ferrara at the Lukin Center has written that reminders of death in the news or in our circles can spark a spike in anxiety. “We might be faced with coming to terms with our own mortality, or our own potential for getting sick and passing away,” she wrote. “And it’s the uncertainty surrounding the situation that can be very anxiety-inducing.” For a politician marinated in media and obsessed with the storyline, those reminders are constant.
None of this is unique to Trump, but the way he speaks about heaven exposes a transactional streak, the suggestion that reputation and rescue are the same thing. That is a hard sell in theology and a dead end in psychology, where the recommended path is acceptance rather than scorekeeping. As Menzies has argued in interviews, reducing distress means learning to face what cannot be controlled, not bargaining with it.
For now, the public keeps getting flashes of a president wrestling in real time with the oldest fear there is, and trying to alchemize it into a campaign message. The words are frank, sometimes even vulnerable, but they also hint at a man searching for proof that a lifetime of winning adds up to more than a headline. On that question, the courts of faith and the courts of mind agree, there is no shortcut past the reckoning everyone must eventually face.
