In his first sit-down television news interview since winning a second term in November, Donald Trump reiterated his promise to pardon his supporters involved in the US Capitol attack in early 2021.
In an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press host Kristen Welker, he also doubled down on promises of mass deportations and tariffs, which he admitted could cause Americans to pay more after riding voters’ complaints about higher prices back to the White House at the expense of Vice President Kamala Harris.
“I am going to act quickly. “First day,” Trump said in the interview, claiming convicted Capitol attackers had been put through a “very nasty system.”
“I know the system,” said Trump, who was convicted in May by New York state prosecutors of criminally falsifying business records to conceal hush money payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. “The system’s a very corrupt system.”
Trump said that there may be some exceptions to his pardons for an attack on the Capitol that was intended to keep him in the White House after losing the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden – and was linked to multiple deaths, including the suicides of traumatized law enforcement officers.
He referred to previously debunked allegations of anti-Trump law enforcement infiltrating his supporters’ ranks and inciting the attack.
When asked about Capitol attackers who assaulted police officers, Trump stated that “they had no choice”. He also claimed that people were pressured into accepting guilty pleas.
“Their whole lives have been destroyed,” Trump said, criticizing the outgoing president’s recent pardon of his son, Hunter Biden, on charges of lying on gun ownership application forms and tax evasion. “They’ve been destroyed.”
Trump denied directing his second administration’s appointees to arrest elected officials involved in the investigation into the US Capitol attack, which resulted in federal criminal charges against him that were later dismissed. But he made a point of telling Welker: “Honestly, they should go to jail.”
More than 1,250 people have been convicted or pleaded guilty in the January 6 attack on the United States Capitol. At least 645 people have been sentenced to prison terms ranging from a few days to 22 years.
During his sentencing Friday, one of the Capitol attackers, Philip Sean Grillo of New York City, taunted the federal judge presiding over his case, “Trump’s gonna pardon me anyways.”
Grillo was sentenced to one year in prison and ordered to be taken into custody immediately.
Another convicted attacker, Tennessee’s Edward Kelley, was found guilty of conspiracy to murder federal employees during a November trial.
Jurors found that he had compiled a list of officials he wanted to kill for investigating him in connection with the Capitol attack.
In other parts of Sunday’s interview, Trump reiterated his intention to impose tariffs on imports from some of the US’s largest trading partners. He stated that he could not guarantee that his plan would not result in increased costs for US families.
He also reiterated his refusal to accept Biden’s fair defeat in the 2020 election, claiming he won in November against Harris because the race “was too big to rig”.
Welker questioned Trump about his plans for mass deportations, specifically families with mixed immigration statuses.
Trump suggested that legal immigrants in the United States were at risk if they had family members living there illegally.
“I don’t want to be breaking up families, so the only way you don’t break up the family is you keep them together and you have to send them all back,” Trump claimed.
He did express some support for working with Democrats to protect Dreamers, or people who have lived in the United States for years after arriving as undocumented children.
However, as he has previously stated, he promised to work to end birthright citizenship and said he would consider amending the US constitution to do so.
“We have to end it,” Trump stated.
Welker also asked Trump if he had fully developed a plan to overhaul healthcare after saying he had “concepts” during his one-on-one debate with Harris.
“We have concepts for a better plan,” Trump responded in part.