President Donald Trump gave an interview to NBC News’ Kristen Welker that aired Sunday on Meet the Press. It was a wide-ranging discussion on his first 100 days, but the legacy media has only been able to find one headline from the sit-down and it has to do with an exchange about deportations in which Welker said “you need to uphold the Constitution” and Trump said “I don’t know.”
The Missing Context
What is – unsurprisingly – missing from those headlines and the accompanying write-ups is the context in which the president said “I don’t know.” Here is the full exchange (you can also watch it in the clip above):
WELKER: …Your Secretary of State says everyone who’s here, citizens and noncitizens, deserve due process. Do you agree, Mr. President?
TRUMP: I don’t know. I’m not, I’m not a lawyer. I don’t know–
WELKER: Well, the Fifth Amendment says as much.
TRUMP: I don’t know. It seems, it seems it might say that. But if you’re talking about that, then we’d have to have a million or 2 million or 3 million trials. We have thousands of people that are– some murderers and some drug dealers and some of the worst people on earth, some of the worst, most dangerous people on earth. And I was elected to get them the hell out of here and the courts are holding me from doing it.
WELKER: But even given those numbers that you’re talking about, don’t you need to uphold the Constitution of the United States as president?
TRUMP: I don’t know. I have to respond by saying, again, I have brilliant lawyers that work for me, and they are going to obviously follow what the Supreme Court said. What you said is not what I heard the Supreme Court said. They have a different interpretation.
So, he is making clear that his administration will follow what the U.S. Supreme Court says. And the “I don’t know” comes in the context of him saying he is not exactly sure what level of due process the Fifth Amendment would provide in this circumstance.
If it were an American citizen or an illegal immigrant arrested on a criminal charge inside the United States and being faced with a loss of liberty, there is no question it would be the utmost. But there is a real question about what level of ‘due process’ illegal immigrants get before being deported.
And there is no question – none whatsoever – that there is no due process under the process of “expedited removal,” which allows Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to swiftly deport people who try to enter the country without valid documents or cannot show they have been in the U.S. at least two years. The only way they stop that process is by claiming asylum. Some people will do that, but many won’t and those people are not entitled to due process.
So, he is right to wiggle on these sweeping demands that he just say all of these illegals get due process. It is actually a lot more complicated than that, and he is 100 percent right to defer to his lawyers while saying, ‘I will follow what the Supreme Court tells me.’
The Media Reaction
But the ladies of The View aren’t going to tell you that and neither are the left-wing pundits and press who are running with Trump’s “I don’t know” as the headline out of that interview.
Whoopi Goldberg was one of the many who seized on the comment. “When you say ‘you don’t know,’ ‘you have to check,’ then you shouldn’t be president if you don’t know the job,” she said Monday on The View. “Why are you doing this? And don’t act like we’re the idiots here. You know the job and, yes, you know you are violating your oath of office by doing it. Or am I crazy?”
The answer is: Yes, you are crazy.
The New Narrative
It is not making headlines at the same rate, but there was another sound bite from the interview on that same front. Welker and Trump got into the topic illegal border crossings being at all-time lows, and the back-and-forth further illustrates the narrative that is being crafted:
WELKER: …Border crossings are at their lowest level ever recorded. Is the border–
TRUMP: Is that good?
WELKER: Is the border now secure?
TRUMP: Yeah, it’s really secure. Isn’t it good though when you say that?
WELKER: It’s absolutely secure?
TRUMP: …Isn’t it a beautiful thing when you say it’s the most secure it’s ever been in the history of our country? Isn’t that a nice statement?
WELKER: Well, I’m, I’m curious to know what it means. You declared a national emergency on the southern border… Will you lift that, that emergency order?
TRUMP: Well, the biggest emergency is the courts aren’t allowing us to take really bad people out–
WELKER: We’re going to talk about that, but talk to me first about this–
TRUMP: Well, that to me is the emergency.
WELKER: Talk to me first about this…
That is such a typical leftist. Why can’t she say ‘yes’? It is like saying, ‘Isn’t it a good thing that the nationwide number of abortions is down?’ The left would never answer ‘yes’ to that. Whether you are pro-choice or not, isn’t it better that we are killing fewer babies? But they can’t say that.
There are certain things that should not be controversial. A secure border is one of them, but she won’t say it. Maybe she’d say she is being objective and doesn’t want to offer her opinion. Fine. But where does she pivot to?
Was her next question something like: How are you going to keep it that way, sir? No, she went to: When are we lifting the emergency declaration so it can become unsecure again?
The left’s narrative is we need open borders and more immigrants – whether they are legal or illegal. The fact that virtually no American knows Rachel Morin’s name (the Maryland mother of five who was savagely raped and murdered by an illegal immigrant while out for a morning jog in August 2023) but virtually all now know Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s name (the deported El Salvadoran national and suspected MS-13 gang member) is ridiculous.
You can check out Megyn’s full analysis by tuning in to episode 1,064 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.