"I'd like to be pope. That would be my number one choice," Trump joked with reporters as he left the White House to travel to Michigan.
He said he doesn't have a preference on who should succeed Pope Francis, but he put in a plug for Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York.
Trump and Dolan saw each other at Francis' funeral in Rome last Saturday.
"I must say we have a cardinal that happens to be out of a place called New York who's very good, so we'll see what happens," Trump said.