Trump Doesn’t Forgive His Enemies. Do We?

When Ross Douthat, a Catholic, sat down with Donald Trump in the Oval Office and asked whether he could forgive his enemies if heaven depended on it, Trump admitted: “I do hate some of my enemies and I always will.” If one had to say which of the two men was the more apt depiction of Christianity, scarcely a soul would say the president. But on forgiveness, perhaps the hardest command of the faith, Trump may be the more honest picture of the American Christian. Trump does not forgive his enemies. Many American Christians do not forgive theirs either. Trump is just more honest about it.

At Charlie Kirk’s memorial service in September 2025, we had a remarkable example of what the command to love one’s enemies looks like when it is obeyed. Charlie’s widow, Erika, summoning all her courage and faith, forgave her husband’s killer: “I forgive him. I forgive him because it is what Christ did.” Then Trump took the stage: “I hate my opponent, and I don’t want the best for them.” Applause erupted. Minutes apart, from the same stage, came the two possible answers to Christ’s command. Erika gave the answer Christ asks of us. Trump gave the answer many actually live by, and it was refreshing to hear such honesty. 

It was in his first campaign in 2015, at the Family Leadership Summit in Iowa, while courting the evangelical voters his coalition could not do without, that Trump revealed his distaste for the command to love one’s enemy. Days earlier, John McCain had complained that Trump’s Phoenix rally “fired up the crazies.” Trump had not forgotten. He said McCain was a war hero “because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.” Eleven years later, when Douthat asked Trump what he thought would happen to him after death, Trump responded with a melancholic admission: “I hope I’m missed.” For him, the highest good is to be liked. To insult him is unforgivable. 

When the summit moderator, Frank Luntz, asked Trump, “Have you ever asked God for forgiveness?” Trump was caught off guard. He first responded, “That’s a tough question!” When pressed, he said, “I’m not sure I have . . . I don’t think so.” For a man who keeps a ledger of what others owe him, asking God for forgiveness means admitting that he is the debtor. 

Christ leaves no room here. His dichotomies are stark: “If you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins” (Matt. 6:15). In the parable of the unforgiving servant (Matt. 18:21–35), a man whose enormous debt was canceled refuses to cancel a small one, and the master hands him over for punishment. In the Lord’s Prayer, our own forgiveness is tied to our ability to forgive. By this standard, Trump plainly fails. The uncomfortable question is how many of us pass. 

I was once teaching teenage boys in confirmation class about the absolute need for forgiveness. To keep them engaged, I offered an admittedly provocative and difficult example: I told them they needed to forgive Osama bin Laden for what he did on 9/11. These fine young men from rural Minnesota had no time for that. Many faithful pew-sitters secretly harbor resentment in their hearts while claiming full conformity. The logic goes: My wounded soul feels a certain way that doesn’t conform to what I am supposed to believe, so I create a separate structure of belief that doesn’t correspond to orthodox Christianity. Douthat himself diagnosed this in Bad Religion: The most American Christianity is the self-made Christianity. 

Whereas liberal progressives are more open about their doctrinal selectiveness, conservatives struggle with the duplicity of external orthodoxy and interior resistance. The believer is the owner of his own ledger. The unique personal grievance that leads to shunning, gossiping, resenting belongs to each man. Forgiveness is mortgaging one’s ledger to God. As C. S. Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity, “Every one says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive.” 

Trump’s refusal to forgive is not a virtue. But his honesty, after decades of politicians performing a piety they did not practice, may explain why so many evangelical Christians and conservative Catholics love him. He says out loud what many of them wrestle with in private: that forgiving an enemy can feel less like grace than like losing. Honesty about the temptation is only a start. On the cross, Christ lost everything, forgave the men who took it, and won.