In his first sit-down news interview since winning a second presidency in November’s election, Donald Trump renewed his promises to pardon his supporters involved in the attack on the U.S. Capitol in early 2021.
He also doubled down on promises of mass deportations and tariffs in the call with NBC’s Meet the Press host Kristen Welker — the latter of which he acknowledged could lead to Americans paying more after voters’ complaints about higher prices returned to were sent to the White House. expense of Vice President Kamala Harris.
‘I’m going to act very quickly. First day,” Trump said in the interview, claiming that convicted Capitol attackers had been put through a “very dirty system.”
“I know the system,” said Trump, himself convicted in May by New York prosecutors of criminally falsifying corporate records to conceal hush money payments to adult film actor Stormy Daniels. “The system is a very corrupt system.”
Trump said there may be some exceptions to his pardon because of an attack on the Capitol that was intended to keep him in the Oval Office after he lost the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden — and was linked to several deaths, including the suicides of traumatized law enforcement officers. He was referring to previously debunked claims that anti-Trump law enforcement officers infiltrated the ranks of his supporters and fueled the attack.
When Trump was asked about the Capitol attackers who attacked police officers, he said “they had no choice.” He also alleged that individuals were pressured into accepting guilty pleas.
“Their entire lives have been destroyed,” said Trump, who criticized the outgoing president’s recent pardon for his son, Hunter Biden, over his convictions for lying on gun ownership applications and tax evasion. “They were destroyed.”
Trump denied that he would direct appointees of his second administration to arrest elected officials involved in the investigation into the attack on the U.S. Capitol, leading to federal criminal charges against him that have been dismissed. But he made a point of telling Welker, “Frankly, they should go to jail.”
More than 1,250 people have been convicted or found guilty in the January 6 attack on the Capitol. And at least 645 people have been sentenced to some time in prison, ranging from a few days to 22 years.
During his sentencing Friday, Philip Sean Grillo of New York City, one of the Capitol attackers, mockingly told the federal judge presiding over his case: “Trump is going to pardon me anyway.” Grillo was given a one-year prison sentence and ordered immediately taken into custody.
Another convicted attacker, Edward Kelley of Tennessee, was found guilty at trial in November of conspiring to murder federal employees. Jurors determined that he made a list of officials he wanted to kill because they investigated him in connection with the attack on the Capitol.
In other parts of Sunday’s interview, Trump confirmed his plans to impose tariffs on imports from some of the U.S.’s largest trading partners. He said he could not guarantee that American families would stop paying as a result of his plan.
He also doubled down on refusing to admit that Biden beat him fair and square in the 2020 election, claiming he won against Harris in November because the race was “too big to rig.”
About his plans for mass deportations, Welker asked Trump about families with mixed immigration status. Trump suggested that immigrants living legally in the US are in danger if their relatives live in the country without permission.
“I don’t want to break up families, so the only way you don’t break up the family is to keep them together and send them all back,” Trump said.
He claimed to have some support for working with Democrats to protect Dreamers, or people who have lived in the U.S. for years after being brought to the country as undocumented children. But, as he has done before, he pledged to work to end birthright citizenship and said he would consider amending the U.S. Constitution to that end.
“We have to put an end to it,” Trump said.
