Copyright Mother Jones
Get your news from a source that’s not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily. In a wide-ranging Sunday night interview on CBS News’s “60 Minutes,” President Donald Trump put his desire for unchecked power on full display. He bragged to correspondent Norah O’Donnell that, thanks to the Insurrection Act of 1792, he can invade your city whenever he wants. He said immigration raids—including acts of police violence such as using tear gas in residential neighborhoods, throwing people to the ground, and breaking car windows—”haven’t gone far enough.” And he said the government shutdown will last until Democrats in Congress bend to his will—or until Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) agrees to eliminate the filibuster, which Thune, so far, has rejected. Here are some of the biggest takeaways from Trump’s comments on domestic policy: Trump blamed the shutdown on the Democrats As the federal government shutdown enters its fifth week—on pace to be the second-longest in history after the one that stretched from December 2018 into January 2019—O’Donnell had a straightforward question for Trump: “What are you doing as president to end the shutdown?” His answer? Blaming the Democrats. “The Republicans are voting almost unanimously to end it, and the Democrats keep voting against ending it,” Trump said. “They’ve lost their way,” he added. “They become crazed lunatics.” Senate Democrats have said they will vote to reopen the government if the legislation includes an extension of Obamacare subsidies; without those, the health policy think tank KFF has estimated, average monthly premiums on people who get their insurance through the ACA marketplace would more than double. Trump also claimed Obamacare is “terrible,” adding, “We can make it much less expensive for people and give them much better health care.” But, yet again, he failed to outline his alternative. (Remember his “concepts of a plan“?) He defended Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s violent tactics Citing videos of ICE officers tackling a mother in court, using tear gas in a residential neighborhood in Chicago, and smashing car windows, O’Donnell asked Trump if some of the raids have “gone too far?” Trump gave what may have been his most direct answer of the interview: “No, I think they haven’t gone far enough,” he said. “We’ve been held back by the judges, by the liberal judges that were put in [the federal courts] by Biden and by Obama.” “You’re okay with those tactics?” O’Donnell pressed. “Yeah, because you have to get the people out,” he replied. He bragged that he can send the military into any city, at any time O’Donnell asked Trump what he meant when, at a speech in Japan last week, he said: “If we need more than the National Guard, we’ll send more than the National Guard.” Trump has already sent guard troops into Washington, DC; Los Angeles; Portland, Ore.; Chicago; and Memphis, Tenn. Trump seemed delighted to remind O’Donnell and viewers of what he sees as his vast power: “Well, if you had to send in the Army, or if you had to send in the Marines, I’d do that in a heartbeat. You know you have a thing called the Insurrection Act. You know that, right? Do you know that I could use that immediately, and no judge can even challenge you on that. But I haven’t chosen to do it because I haven’t felt we need it.” This is not the first time Trump has threatened to use the Insurrection Act, which allows the president to override federal law that prohibits the military from acting as law enforcement, in order to “suppress rebellion.” But the law has not been used in more than three decades and is widely seen by legal experts as having a frightening potential for abuse. “So you’re going to send the military into American cities?” O’Donnell pressed. “Well, if I wanted to, I could, if I want to use the Insurrection Act,” Trump responded. “The Insurrection Act has been used routinely by presidents, and if I needed it, that would mean I could bring in the Army, the Marines, I could bring in whoever I want, but I haven’t chosen to use it. I hope you give me credit for that.” He claimed he has been “mild-mannered” when it comes to political retribution In only nine months, Trump has made good on his long-running promise to prosecute his political enemies, including former FBI Director James Comey, former National Security Advisor John Bolton, and New York Attorney General Letitia James. “There’s a pattern to these names. They’re all public figures who have publicly denounced you. Is it political retribution?” O’Donnell asked. Trump promptly played the victim: “You know who got indicted? The man you’re looking at,” he replied. “I got indicted and I was innocent, and here I am, because I was able to beat all of the nonsense that was thrown at me.” (He was, indeed, found guilty in New York last year on 34 felony counts in the Stormy Daniels hush-money case.) Despite posting a Truth Social message in September demanding that Attorney General Pam Bondi speed up the prosecutions, just days before Comey was indicted and a couple weeks before Bolton and James were, Trump insisted he did not instruct the Department of Justice to pursue them. “No, you don’t have to instruct them, because they were so dirty, they were so crooked, they were so corrupt,” he said, proceeding to praise the work of Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel. “I think I’ve been very mild-mannered,” Trump continued. “You’re looking at a man who was indicted many times, and I had to beat the rap, otherwise I couldn’t have run for president.” He think he’s “better looking” than Zohran Mamdani Trump insisted that the frontrunner in New York City’s Tuesday mayoral election, 34-year-old self-described Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani, is a “Communist.” When O’Donnell asked Trump what he makes of comparisons between himself and Mamdani—”charismatic, breaking the old rules,” as O’Donnell put it—Trump replied: “I think I’m a much better-looking person than him.” He then reiterated his threat to withhold federal funding from his home city if Mamdani wins over ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo. “It’s going to be hard for me as the president to give a lot of money to New York, because if you have a Communist running New York, all you’re doing is wasting the money you’re sending there,” Trump said. He claimed that he is “not a fan of Cuomo one way or the other,” but added, “If it’s going to be between a bad Democrat and a Communist, I’m going to pick the bad Democrat all the time, to be honest with you.”
