Trump says mass deportation policy was 'too tough'

In a 60 Minutes interview with Ross Douthat, Trump’s first after the massive midterm defeat on Tuesday, Trump was asked “What is one thing you would like to work with a Democratic majority on?”

“I’d love to do something on immigration,” Trump said.

“What?” Douthat asked incredulously.

“Well…” Trump began.

“Do you think immigration hurt you during the midterms? You think the crackdown hurt you?” Douthat asked.

“I think it both helped and hurt,” Trump said. “I think I got an A+ for closing up the border, I get very high marks for getting the bad ones out, but I get hurt because we also took people that had good jobs, that created one violation or breaking of the law, and that was that they came into the country illegally.

“Now there is a large part of the country that think that they should be put out, and there’s a large part of the country that thinks that they should be allowed to stay if they’re good people working in a landscaping company or working in a hotel or doing something right, in some cases paying taxes. And there’s a large group of people think they should be allowed to stay,” Trump said.

“So you think your deportation policy went too far?” Douthat asked.

“I think it was too tough,” Trump said, “it might be too tough.”

“What would happen, what does the deal look like with the Democrats?” Douthat asked.

“I think ultimately that hurt me,” Trump said. “Well the deal would be: we would work something out, and I think that’s something that’s actually doable.”

“Doable to create some kind of legal status for the landscapers and the—?” Douthat asked.

“Yeah,” Trump asserted. “When you go into a hotel and you have a woman that's worked there as a, you know, as a maid, as a cleaner, as a this, as a that, as a waitress, a lot of good things, great jobs, and all of a sudden, they're being taken out of the country. It's tough. It's a tough thing. But there's a group of people that I would say on the sort of pretty far right that would like everybody taken out.”

“Do any of those people work in your administration? Are they in the building with us right now?” Douthat asked.

“Well there are a lot of those people,” Trump said, who just promoted hardliner Stephen Miller to White House chief of staff. “Then there's also people that are more modified on that. In other words, get the killers out, get all the the rough ones out, get the drug dealers out, but let the people that are here, and in some cases here for 10 and 15 years, work a deal for them.”

“You think the Democratic Party right now has people in it who would be interested in this kind of deal?” Douthat asked.

“I think so, yeah,” Trump said. “People have already called me.”

Trump’s campaign for his second term was run on a platform of no new wars and mass deportations. This is what the Make America Great Again base wanted, as did so many of those who voted GOP without ever previously having done so. Trump has since launched a war in Iran and now, despite the praise that came from so many on the mass deportation plan.

The response on X was swift and fierce.