President Donald Trump said during a call-in appearance on Fox News’s “Fox & Friends” on Tuesday that his efforts to broker a settlement between Russia and Ukraine are motivated partly by spiritual concerns. “I want to try and get to heaven, if possible,” the 79-year-old president remarked, adding that averting the deaths of “seven thousand people a week” would improve his chances of salvation. At a White House press briefing later in the day, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters the president’s comment was not a joke. “I think the president was serious. I think the president wants to get to heaven, as I hope we all do,” she said, underscoring the administration’s view that ending the 42-month war is a moral imperative as well as a strategic goal. Trump’s remarks came after he hosted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and several European leaders at the White House on Monday to discuss a potential cease-fire and security guarantees. The president, who has increasingly invoked religious themes since surviving an assassination attempt last year, has previously suggested that successful peace deals could merit consideration for the Nobel Peace Prize; on Tuesday he framed the Ukraine initiative instead as a matter of personal conscience.