Gerald Fitzhugh

Gerald Fitzhugh is a fictional United States President in the Left Behind series written by Timothy LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. He is also a main character in Neesa Hart's End of State book series, a spin off of Left Behind. His First Lady is Wilma Fitzhugh, who is only mentioned in name in book one. It is mentioned that he also owns a ranch. George H. W. Bush is said to be one of Fitzhugh's predecessors as the U.S. President.

In the third movie of the Left Behind series, Left Behind: World at War, Fitzhugh is played by Louis Gossett making him one of the, if not the, first African American President in the United States.

Holding office when the Rapture occurs, Fitzhugh initially supports the moves taken by the United Nations and its new Secretary General, Nicolae Carpathia, to restore peace. Prior to this he had personally requested the company of Nobel Prize-winning Israeli chemist Chaim Rosenzweig, to make an offer for a miracle agricultural fertilizer formula that was only exclusively available to Rosenzweig's home nation of Israel. However, Chaim turned him down and would later license the formula to distribution by the United Nations as part of a seven-year protection treaty with Israel (the same covenant that would begin the Tribulation).

Carpathia convinces Fitzhugh to destroy 90% of America's weapons, and to donate the remaining 10% to the U.N. (a requirement of all nations wishing to belong to the new world government, the "Global Community"), and the President initially appears be a benevolent pacifist. He also voices his opposition against the growing militia movement, comprised of people refusing to give away their weapons (presumably, U.S. Army soldiers and survivalists. However, Fitzhugh is cruelly disillusioned after he discovers that his position as the one of the world's most powerful heads of state will be severely downgraded to that of advisers to the Global Community sub-potentate assigned to North America, placing it on equal footing with the Canadian Prime Minister and the Mexican President. His new office would no longer be the White House's Oval Office but a rather ordinary one in the Old Executive Office Building, with limited security provided by the GC. Realizing that these moves would effectively make him Carpathia's puppet, Fitzhugh secretly aligns himself with the militia and rallies the support of Great Britain and Egypt, threatening to assassinate the newly-retitled potentate during a visit to Washington. But when Carpathia discovers Fitzhugh has turned on him, he flees the city and launches a retaliatory strike, in which Fitzhugh is killed.