President Donald Trump said in his first sit-down interview since last week’s midterm elections that his immigration enforcement may have gone too far, telling CBS News correspondent Ross Douthat that the policy “might be too tough” and likely hurt Republicans at the ballot box.
The midterms delivered sweeping Democratic wins, including victories in Republican strongholds like Texas. Douthat asked Trump whether his strict immigration and deportation enforcement contributed to those losses.
“I think it both helped and hurt,” Trump said. “I think I got an A-plus for closing up the border…I get very high marks for getting the bad ones out.”
In the extended version of the interview posted online, Trump said, “We had 25 million people come in through Biden over a four-year period, and many of those people were — as you know, they were from prisons, they were drug dealers, they were from mental institutions.”
But he acknowledged that many people in the country illegally were not criminals, and said that distinction likely drove the backlash against his policies.
“But I get hurt because we also took people that had good jobs, that — 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 think 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? And in some cases, paying taxes. And there’s a large group of people who think that they should be allowed to stay.”
Douthat pressed further, asking: “So you think your deportation policy — went too far?”
“I think it was — too tough…I think it might be too tough, yeah,” Trump replied. “And I think ultimately that hurt me.”
Trump suggested an immigration deal with the incoming Democratic Congress could be “doable” if it avoided the two extremes — deporting every illegal immigrant or deporting none. He said many Democrats are willing to work with him on border enforcement, pointing to incoming Texas Sen.-elect James Talarico as an example.
A Fox News voter poll of more than 100,000 registered voters nationwide, conducted Oct. 19 to Nov. 3, found immigration was the only issue on which Republicans led Democrats.
