Trump Stared Down Eternity and All He Felt Was Hate

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Asked whether he could forgive his enemies to get into heaven, the President gave his answer: “The answer is no.”

By Adam Kinzinger

Donald Trump’s remarkable 60 Minutes interview was taped at the White House on Friday, three days after Republicans suffered their worst midterm defeat in half a century. For most of the interview, Ross Douthat pressed the President on the things you’d expect: the election, his deportation policy, how his net worth had grown by billions while he was in office. Then, near the end, Douthat, a Catholic who writes often about faith, changed the subject.

What did Donald Trump think would happen to him when he died?

“I hope I’m missed,” Trump said.

Not your memory, Douthat pressed. Yourself.

“Well, I’m a religious person, so in theory I go to heaven,” Trump said. Did he think he was going? “I hope so. I don’t want to go to hell.”

So Douthat asked the question that mattered. He brought up the remarks Erika Kirk had given at her husband’s memorial about Christian forgiveness, and about forgiving your enemies. Then he asked the President to imagine that getting into heaven required forgiving his. People like James Comey. Nancy Pelosi. Could he do it?

“Sure, the easy answer to that is, oh yes, I could forgive,” Trump began.

“No, I don’t think that’s an easy question at all,” Douthat said.

Trump called his enemies “very bad people” and “very dishonest.” To pretend to forgive them, he said, wouldn’t be real.

“Is the answer no then?”

“The answer is no.”

“Before the judgment throne of God?”

“Before the judgment.”

“You are telling me you couldn’t find it in your heart to forgive some of your enemies, after all that’s been given to you?” Douthat asked.

“I probably cannot do that, no, because I do hate some of my enemies, and I always will.”

Donald Trump knew the easy answer. He just couldn’t bring himself to mean it.

Think about the moment he was in. A week earlier, voters across the country had rejected him in historic fashion. He’s facing two years as a lame duck, with a Congress that can subpoena him and a party already fighting over what comes after him.

If there was ever a time for a politician to show a softer side, this was it. He could have said, “Honestly, it would be hard. Some of these people did terrible things to me. But I’d like to think I could. I’d try.” It would have cost him nothing. It might even have helped.

He couldn’t do it. Not for his political fortunes. Not for his legacy. Not even, by his own account, for his soul.

If you’ve been paying attention, none of this should surprise you.

In September of last year, at Charlie Kirk’s memorial, his widow, Erika Kirk, publicly forgave the man accused of killing her husband. A few minutes later, the President took the same stage and said that Charlie hadn’t hated his opponents. “That’s where I disagreed with Charlie,” Trump said. “I hate my opponent and I don’t want the best for them.”

Douthat was pointing straight back at that moment. More than a year later, with time to think about it and a whole country watching, Trump gave the same answer.

The interview didn’t reveal anything new. For Donald Trump, the grievance always comes first.

The Weight He Chooses to Carry

I’ll be honest that I also find it deeply sad.

Donald Trump is 80 years old. He has survived two attempts on his life. Someone sat across from him and asked, in effect, what he wants to bring with him into eternity, and he clung tightly to his grudges. He’d rather hold on to the hate than let it go, even with everything at stake.

Forgiveness isn’t weakness. In my faith, and in just about every faith I know of, it’s freedom. It’s how you set down a weight you were never meant to carry forever. It doesn’t mean pretending wrongs weren’t wrong, or that anyone escapes accountability. It means refusing to let the people who hurt you decide who you become. Trump has made the opposite choice, and he seems to have made it for good.

Trump claims to be a religious man, and I am in no position to judge a man’s soul. But Jesus addressed this very topic directly, right after teaching his disciples the Lord’s Prayer:

“For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”

(Matthew 6:14-15)

I won’t pretend to know exactly what happens to any of us after we pass. But I know what it looks like when a man tells the whole country he’d rather hold on to his hatred than let it go.

And there’s a lesson there for the rest of us who don’t want to live like that.

In a couple of weeks, a lot of us will sit down for Thanksgiving with people we’ve argued with for the better part of a decade. The relative who stopped returning your calls. The neighbor whose yard signs you’ve glared at since 2016.

We need to be abundantly clear about something: this country isn’t going to heal on grievance. And we can’t surely wait for this President to show us how to forgive, because he just told us that he won’t.

So it’s on us. Not to forget. Not to excuse what was done. But to choose, where we can, to let go of the hate before it decides who we are

.Source: Trump Stared Down Eternity and All He Felt Was Hate

Talarico’s message to billionaire class:”We will not be conquered.”

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Heather Cox Richardson | Letters from an American

HCR
Heather Cox Richardson

Nov 7, 2026

In his victory speech on November 3, after winning a U.S. Senate seat in the previously Republican-dominated state of Texas, Senator-elect James Talarico redefined the modern United States by recalling an older era when Americans worked together to defend their country against those who would take all its wealth and power for themselves.

His words were especially piercing in Texas, where billionaire Elon Musk spent at least $225 million in the midterm elections to keep the state government in the hands of Republicans. And yet, voters elected a Democratic governor, a Democratic lieutenant governor, a Democratic attorney general, and a Democratic state house anyway.

“We just took back Texas,” Talarico told the cheering crowd. “We just proved that all the money in the world is no match for the people of Texas. We just showed that a politics of division is no match for a politics of love. And we just sent a message to every billionaire megadonor, every trillionaire megadonor, every corrupt defender of this broken political system in this state, in this country. Power belongs to the people.”

Leaning into his religious faith and his own history as a middle-school teacher of underprivileged students and as the son of a single mother, he told the crowd: “Scripture has taught me, my own life has taught me, always bet on the underdog.”

“We were the underdogs in this race,” he said. “We went up against nearly 40 years of doubt and disillusionment. We went up against more than $300 million, more than any Senate campaign in American history. We went up against all the negative ads, smear campaigns, foreign bots, and AI deep fakes that money can buy. Those attacks were the final howls of a dying establishment, the death rattle of a status quo that knows its days are numbered.

“They played dirty because they were desperate. But we never lost hope. We never lost faith. And against big money and long odds, we took our power back. Always, always, bet on the underdog.

“We built a movement unlike any this state has ever seen. We united Texans from all backgrounds and beliefs onto one team to take on this broken, corrupt political system: first time voters, three time Trump voters, working people from every corner of this state who are fed up and ready for change. This win is for every underdog who’s been counted out and left behind. This win is for every teacher and every nurse, for every farmer and every rancher. For every young person who’s trying to buy a home. For every parent who’s trying to put food on the table.

“This win is for every Texan who’s ever wondered if anyone is listening. I heard you. We heard you, and tonight the world hears you.”

Talarico identified the moment the nation is in as monumental. “This win is not about the Democratic party or the Republican party,” he said. “It’s much bigger than that. There is something broken in America. Our economic system is broken. Our political system is broken. Even our relationships with each other feel broken. That’s because the most powerful people in the world want it that way.”

Talarico rooted his political beliefs in his belief in the commandments to “love God and love neighbor” and noted that “despite our differences, we all want the same things. A safe neighborhood, a good job, a high-quality, well-funded public school, and the ability to see a doctor when we need one.

“But the billionaires who own the social media algorithms, who own the cable news networks, who own the politicians fighting on our screens, they want us at each other’s throats. They want us focused on how we’re different instead of on how we’re the same. They want us looking left and right at each other instead of looking up at them. The real fight in this country is not left versus right. It is top versus bottom.

“The people at the top work so hard to keep us angry and divided because our unity is a threat to their wealth and their power,” he said. “We saw it in this race. We saw it in every billionaire-funded attack ad. The people at the top divide us by party, by race, by gender, by religion, by culture, so we don’t notice that they are picking our pockets, that they are defunding our schools, that they are gutting our healthcare, that they are raising taxes on all of us while they cut taxes for themselves. It is the oldest strategy in the world, divide and conquer. But tonight we sent a crystal clear message to the people at the top. We will not be conquered.”

“[W]e are tired of being pitted against each other,” Talarico continued. “We are tired of being told to hate each other. It has been 10 years of this kind of politics. Politics as blood sport. Politics as trolling and owning. Politics as professional wrestling. It tears families apart. It ends friendships. And it leaves us all feeling terrible all the time. People across the political spectrum are hungry for a different kind of politics. Not a politics of hate, not a politics of fear, not a politics of division, but a politics of love.”

He explained how Democrats had won Texas: “We mobilized our 60,000 volunteers in every corner of the state, and together we delivered bottled water to Sand Branch, a community south of Dallas with no running water. We donated school supplies to an elementary school in El Cenizo, a small town on the border. We collected more than 20,000 pounds of groceries for families in Fort Worth who are struggling under the high cost of living. Before the world changes in ways you see on TV or read about in newspapers, the world changes person to person, neighbor to neighbor.”

“[W]e know how to get there,” he said. “We must get big money out of our politics so no billionaire or trillionaire can buy our elections. We must unrig this economic system that only benefits the top 1%. We must pass universal health care so no one goes bankrupt just because they get sick. We must invest in our teachers and our students so every underdog has a fighting chance. We must end these corrupt forever wars that are driving up prices and killing our brave men and women in uniform.

“And,” he continued, “we must heal the deep spiritual corruption at the root of all of these crises. We must bridge the divides between us and repair the ties that bind us. We forged a new kind of politics here in the Lone Star State. An answer to this decade of division. We showed that when working people come together across every dividing line, we can do extraordinary things. We won this race because people who are desperate for change now are going to get change.

“That old politics is dying,” he told the crowd, “and a new politics is being born through each of us.”

Talarico, who won his race by an astonishing 12 points, accurately identified the extraordinary importance of local and relational organizing to create communities that would elect Democratic candidates in 2026.

He also accurately identified the threat this kind of politics poses to establishment politics, especially to MAGA. President Trump today reinforced his need for division and hatred by offering the job of White House press secretary to Dana White, the chief executive officer of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, whom he described as a “violent Fighter and Warrior.” Trump encouraged White to take the job and bring along a number of his UFC fighters.

“We need these people to defend us against the Lunatic Left,” Trump posted.

Source: Heather Cox Richardson | Letters from an American

218 Signatures Are Coming Next Week to Force Vote on Epstein Bill

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Survivors Can Sue DOJ Over Hidden Files

Thomas Massie predicts 218 signatures for a House vote on a bill letting Epstein survivors challenge alleged withholding of Justice Department records.

A congressional effort to strengthen access to Jeffrey Epstein-related records could reach a crucial procedural stage next week, with Republican Representative Thomas Massie predicting that a discharge petition will secure the 218 signatures needed to bring the issue before the House.

In a post on 5 November, Massie said he expected to reach the threshold when lawmakers return to Washington. He described the proposed legislation as a way for survivors to obtain records concerning their cases and challenge the withholding of material by the Justice Department.

The proposal, known as the Epstein Files Transparency Act II, is intended to address a central weakness in the existing disclosure framework: what legal options are available when the government is accused of failing to release information it is required to provide.

The Legal Remedies the Bill Would Give Survivors

H.R. 9694 was introduced on 15 July 2026 by Massie, Democratic Representative Ro Khanna, and Democratic Representative Teresa Leger Fernández. Rather than simply demanding another release of documents, the bill proposes mechanisms to challenge alleged failures to comply with transparency requirements.

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