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Trump's Unusual Beliefs About God & the Afterlife (An Investigation)
In this episode, Malcolm and Simone delve deep into understanding Donald Trump's theological beliefs, challenging the initial assumption that Trump lacks a specific theology. The discussion uncovers that Trump has a detailed personal theology heavily influenced by Norman Vincent Peale's teachings and 'The Power of Positive Thinking.' This self-help-centric Christianity shaped much of Trump's behavior and decision-making. Additionally, the episode explores Trump's recent efforts in international peace negotiations and how his contemplation of legacy and afterlife might be influencing his moves to end conflicts around the world.
Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Simone. Today was, it's one of these episodes that's just stunning for me because I come into it being like. You know what? I'm gonna try to untangle what Trump's true theological beliefs are. Okay? And my. Intuition going into this is he just didn't really have a theology. And he just had never thought deeply about this particular subject.
Right. Just Trump is
Simone Collins: great and everyone knows it.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, he's the best. As I tied dug into it though, I learned that that is very much not true. Whoa. As a. Fairly detailed theology that he doesn't share with the public a lot. So just, you know, this is this, it says not what he signals to the public anymore.
But when you understand his theology, a lot of his behaviors that otherwise seem. Crazy or insane or don't make sense all of a sudden makes sense. In fact, I would argue that to understand and predict Trump's behavior, you need to understand his theology. And the other weird thing about this [00:01:00] theology is while it is not a traditional Christian theology, it came from a traditional Christian Church.
Oh, but just a unique one. Oh, wow. And, and we're gonna go further here because I also think that his theology has changed a lot recently, given that he thinks he's about to die or not about to die, but he's sort of like, it's the end of my life. You know? He's, he's contemplating his legacy. Yeah.
The, the quote recently from him that I absolutely love is if I can see, he's talking about ending the war in the Ukraine. He goes, if I can save 7,000 people a week from being killed, I wanna try and get to heaven if possible. Trump said, I'm hearing that I'm not doing well. I'm really at the bottom of the totem pole, but if I can get to heaven, this will be one of the reasons.
And I just love this idea of Trump beginning to get worried. Because, you know, he is cheated on spouses. He doesn't really go to church. He doesn't seem to understand much about the Bible. If we're, if we're gonna talk about, like, not understanding the, there's the famous quote [00:02:00] that I love. In the Bloomberg interview when asked what his favorite Bible verse is.
And you know, he just like, the Bible's my favorite book.
Speaker: Okay. You mentioned the Bible. You've been talking about how it's your favorite book. And you said, I think last night in Iowa, some people are surprised that you say that. I'm wondering what one or two of your most favored bible, uh, verses are and why? Well, I, I wouldn't want to get into it because to me that's very personal.
Trump: You know, when I talk about the Bible, it's very personal there. So I don't want to get into verses. I don't want to get into. There's verse, it means a lot to you that you think about or cite. The, the Bible means a lot to me, but I don't want to get into specifics, even to cite a verse that you like. No, I don't wanna do that.
I mean, you, an Old Testament guy or a New Testament guy. Uh, probably equal. I think it's just an incredible, the whole Bible is an incredible, I joke, uh, very much so. They always hold up the art of the deal. I say my second favorite book of all time, but, uh, I just think
Published on 3 months, 3 weeks ago