The United States is “missing a lot of religion,” former President Donald Trump said during an interview with podcaster Lex Fridman, which debuted on Tuesday.
“One of the tragic things about life is that it ends. How often do you think about your death? Are you afraid of it?” Fridman asked Trump during the interview.
“I have a friend who’s very, very successful, and he’s in his 80s, mid 80s, and he asked me the exact same question. I said, I turned it around. I said, ‘Well, what about you?’ He said, ‘I think about it every minute of every day,'” Trump said of his friend, ultimately explaining that people of faith have an easier time dealing with that thought.
“And then a week later, he called me to tell me something. And he starts off the conversation by going, tick, tock, tick. This is just dark. It’s a dark person, you know, in a sense, but it is what it is,” Trump said.
“I mean, you know, if you’re religious, you have, I think, a better feeling towards supposed to go to heaven, ideally, not hell,” he said before explaining that he believes the U.S. lacks the presence of religion like it used to have.
“I think our country’s missing a lot of religion. I think it really was a much better place with religion. It. It was some … it was almost a guide, you know, to a certain extent,” Trump explained, noting that there are “no real guardrails without it.”
“You want to be good to people. Without religion, there’s no real, there are no guard rails. I’d love to see us get back to religion, more religion in this country,” Trump added.
President Trump: "I think our country's missing a lot of religion. I think it was a much better place with religion. It was almost a guide... you want to be good to people. Without religion, there are no guardrails. I'd love to see us get back to more religion in this country." pic.twitter.com/Ns6iYuhdqN
— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) September 3, 2024
Trump has spoken about God more openly and often after his near-death encounter at his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, crediting “God alone” for preventing the “unthinkable.”
“Our Secret Service sniper, from a much greater distance and with only one bullet used, took the assassin’s life,” he said during his speech at the Republican National Convention, adding, “I’m not supposed to be here tonight.”
While the crowd disagreed, shouting, “Yes you are!” Trump added, “Thank you, but I’m not, and, I will tell you, I stand before you in this arena only by the grace of Almighty God.”
Speaking to Mark Levin on this topic, Trump added, “I think you think, like, if you believe in God, you believe in God more.”
“And somebody said like, why — and I’d like to think that God thinks that I’m going to straighten out our country. Our country is so sick and it’s so broken. Our country is just broken. And maybe that was the reason — I don’t know, I don’t know. A lot of people have said that,” Trump added.
