“Well, then I wouldn’t be real, would I?”
Thus spake Donald Trump, when asked if he would forgive former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to get himself into heaven.
That our president would choose damnation tells us bout the man, but it tells us more about our culture.
Mercy and forgiveness are out of vogue these days, on the Left and the Right. Look at the rash of children “going no-contact” with their parents and the persistence of cancel culture. Look at the thirst for executions and deportations.
But there’s something more fundamental buried in Trump’s answer to 60 Minutes host Ross Douthat’s question about the afterlife. Trump didn’t just refuse to forgive. Trump refuses to forgive because if Trump forgave, “I wouldn’t be real, would I?”
Trump was appealing to that very American idea of authenticity: “I have to be me.”
President Trump speaks with 60 Minutes correspondent Ross Douthat at the White House. (CBS News via Getty Images)
" data-large-file="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/11/YL.Trump60Minutes.111826.jpg?w=1024" height="658" width="1024" src="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/11/YL.Trump60Minutes.111826.jpg?w=1024" alt="President Trump speaks with 60 Minutes correspondent Ross Douthat at the White House. (CBS News via Getty Images)" class="wp-image-4803688" srcset="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/11/YL.Trump60Minutes.111826.jpg 1400w, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/...1/YL.Trump60Minutes.111826.jpg?resize=300,193 300w, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/...1/YL.Trump60Minutes.111826.jpg?resize=768,494 768w, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/.../YL.Trump60Minutes.111826.jpg?resize=1024,658 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px">
President Trump speaks with 60 Minutes correspondent Ross Douthat at the White House. (CBS News via Getty Images)
Authenticity, and its sister idea autonomy, are so dominant today that they are hardly noticed anymore. But for baby boomers such as the president, authenticity and autonomy are dearly held ideas. Consider Trump’s favorite song — no, not “Sympathy for the Devil,” but Frank Sinatra’s “My Way.”
It turns out the song, like Douthat’s question, is also about the Last Judgment:
And now the end is near
And so I face the final curtain
My friend, I’ll say it clear
I’ll state my case of which I’m certain.
I’ve lived a life that’s full
I’ve traveled each and every highway
And more, much more than this
I did it my way.
For Trump, rejecting salvation is about “keeping it real,” to put it in early-21st-century parlance. Or in a slightly older phrasing, “to thine own self be true.”
These are the mantras of our individualistic age. Only suckers and losers lay down their lives for a friend. Loving one another is unpaid emotional labor. “Role player” is an insult.
IN FOCUS: TRUMP’S BASE GOES BLUE
While antithetical to Christianity, this narcissistic self-regard fits perfectly into a very old tradition. “Better to reign in Hell,” Satan says in Milton’s Paradise Lost, “than serve in Heaven.”
In other words, nothing is more important than to do it “my way,” and to “be real.”
Continue reading...
[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
