UNITED STATES President Donald Trump is circumspect about his duties to uphold due process rights laid out in the Constitution, saying in a new interview that he does not know whether U.S. citizens and noncitizens alike deserve that guarantee.
AP reported him saying he does not think military force will be needed to make Canada the “51st state” and played down the possibility he would look to run for a third term in the White House.
The comments in a wide-ranging, and at moments combative, interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” came as the Republican president’s efforts to quickly enact his agenda face sharper headwinds with Americans just as his second administration crossed the 100-day mark, according to a recent poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
Trump, however, made clear that he is not backing away from a to-do list that he insists the American electorate broadly supported when they elected him in November.
Here are some of the highlights from the interview with NBC’s Kristen Welker that was taped Friday at his Mar-a-Lago property in Florida and aired Sunday.
Trump doesn’t commit to due process
Critics on the left have tried to make the case that Trump is chipping away at due process in the United States. Most notably, they cite the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man who was living in Maryland when he was mistakenly deported to El Salvador and imprisoned without communication.
Trump says Abrego Garcia is part of a violent transnational gang. The Republican president has sought to turn deportation into a test case for his campaign against illegal immigration despite a Supreme Court order saying the administration must work to return Abrego Garcia to the U.S.
Asked in the interview whether U.S. citizens and noncitizens both deserve due process as laid out in the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution, Trump was noncommittal.
“I don’t know. I’m not, I’m not a lawyer. I don’t know,” Trump said when pressed by Welker.
The Fifth Amendment provides “due process of law,” meaning a person has certain rights when it comes to being prosecuted for a crime. Also, the 14th Amendment says no state can “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
Trump said he has “brilliant lawyers ... and they are going to obviously follow what the Supreme Court said.”
He said he was pushing to deport “some of the worst, most dangerous people on Earth,” but that courts are getting in his way.
“I was elected to get them the hell out of here, and the courts are holding me from doing it,” Trump said.
Military action against Canada is ‘highly unlikely’
The president has repeatedly threatened that he intends to make Canada the “51st state.”
Before his White House meeting on Tuesday with newly elected Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, Trump is not backing away from the rhetoric that has angered Canadians.
Trump, however, told NBC that it was “highly unlikely” that the U.S. would need to use military force to make Canada the 51st state.
He offered less certainty about whether his repeated calls for the U.S. to take over Greenland from NATO-ally Denmark can be achieved without military action.
“Something could happen with Greenland,” Trump said. “I’ll be honest, we need that for national and international security. ... I don’t see it with Canada. I just don’t see it, I have to be honest with you.”
Trump said the U.S. economy is in a “transition period” but he expects it to do “fantastically” despite the economic turmoil sparked by his tariffs.
He offered sharp pushback when Welker noted that some Wall Street analysts now say the chances of a recession are increasing.
“Well, you know, you say, some people on Wall Street say,” Trump said. “Well, I tell you something else. Some people on Wall Street say that we’re going to have the greatest economy in history.”
He also deflected blame for the 0.3% decline in the U.S. economy in the first quarter. He said he was not responsible for it.
“I think the good parts are the Trump economy and the bad parts are the Biden economy because he’s done a terrible job,” referring to his Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden.
Trump doubled down on his recent comments at a Cabinet meeting that children might have to have two dolls instead of 30, denying that is an acknowledgment his tariffs will lead to supply shortages.
“I’m just saying they don’t need to have 30 dolls. They can have three. They don’t need to have 250 pencils. They can have five.” - May 5, 2025
