Believe Him When He Says It

A closer look at the political stakes and Trump’s own words in two Time magazine interviews

Images courtesy of Time magazine

We’re holding Trump accountable for his past actions. But what about his future plans?

By now you’ve likely heard about the interviews that Donald Trump gave to Time magazine, where he apparently still hopes to be named Person of the Year, and not just in his own head.

Until recently, we’ve mostly heard about what those in close proximity to Trump, including the Heritage Foundation, plan to do if he is elected. They even spelled it out in a big plan called “Project 2025,” which my team and I at The Big Picture have been warning about since last July.

But Trump has been more cagey than his political advisors, not revealing much by way of his actual policies and plans. 

Until now. 

With this set of interviews, Trump has begun to tell the American people directly what he will do should he regain the White House. And we can’t shrug and just let this go. In fact, we can and must turn them into valuable election talking points.

There’s a long parade of horribles amidst the ramblings of the ex-president, but I’m going to focus on three areas in particular. You may notice that they also represent three wedges I have written about before. These are things Trump has hammered, whether intentionally or not, into the side of GOP. They include abortion rights, migrants and the border, and democracy and the rule of law.

In this piece, I’ll provide some backdrop and context for each issue before covering what Trump actually said in the interviews. Then I’ll explore what havoc his attempt to execute on those threats might cause should he regain office. It’s one thing to hear Trump issue a warning in the abstract, but entirely another to map out how that might unfold with real consequences for real people.

I should caution that this exercise may produce a bit of stress for readers. Rather than allow that stress to morph into generalized anxiety, over which we can sometimes feel powerless, I hope to leverage his words to help forge a path to his electoral defeat. Remember, these are wedges of Trump’s own making, and though he means them to sow fear and discord, our response can also build courage and resolve to defeat him.

Critically, I believe Trump has erred in showing his cards in this way, perhaps out of sheer vanity to be on the cover of Time. The Biden Campaign, Democratic officials, and we, the voting public, now have concrete points around which to rally, mobilize and communicate. That’s why I am setting them out here, too, in the hopes that readers can absorb and share them.

With that, let’s take a deep breath, and dive in.

Abortion

Abortion is the biggest wedge of all for the Republican Party. It began when Trump fulfilled his promise to religious conservatives to appoint pro-life Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade. They did so in June of 2022, and the GOP has lost ground in nearly every special and general election since, even in states like Ohio and Kansas where Trump prevailed easily in 2020.

The Dobbs decision supposedly handed back to the states all power to determine their own abortion laws. States controlled by the GOP responded by passing draconian bans, some of them near absolute. Millions of women in those states are now without a right that women for two generations before them held under the U.S. Constitution.

But the GOP is not done, because it was never really about leaving it to the states. Powerful Christian Nationalist forces are working to ensure that abortion is restricted nationwide, whether through a national abortion ban or by using the power of the Trump White House to restrict abortion medications and supplies.

So what did Trump say on this during the interview? 

First, he refused to commit to vetoing a national ban:

So just to be clear, then: You won't commit to vetoing the bill if there's federal restrictions—federal abortion restrictions?

Trump: I won’t have to commit to it because it’ll never—number one, it’ll never happen. Number two, it’s about states’ rights. You don’t want to go back into the federal government.

Here’s what this could mean in practical terms. Trump believes that no bill containing a national abortion ban would ever reach his desk because it would never garner 60 votes in the Senate. But we’ve already seen how big, unrelated legislation (e.g., a TikTok ban) can get tacked on to must-pass bills (like foreign aid) and sail through that way. 

We also shouldn’t assume that, should the GOP win back the Senate, it won’t change or limit the filibuster rule—just as Republicans did when they lowered the threshold to a bare majority to approve Supreme Court justices.  

A national abortion ban would be a very high priority in a government controlled in all branches by a Trumpified GOP. And make no mistake, Trump almost certainly would sign it.

On abortion medication, Trump did one of his infamous “I will have a plan and an announcement in two weeks”—very much like his never-disclosed tax returns and his never-begun infrastructure week.

Do you think women should be able to get the abortion pill mifepristone? 

Trump: Well, I have an opinion on that, but I’m not going to explain. I’m not gonna say it yet. But I have pretty strong views on that. And I’ll be releasing it probably over the next week.

Well, this is a big question, Mr. President, because your allies have called for enforcement of the Comstock Act, which prohibits the mailing of drugs used for abortions by mail. The Biden Department of Justice has not enforced it. Would your Department of Justice enforce it?

Trump: I will be making a statement on that over the next 14 days. 

You will? 

Trump: Yeah, I have a big statement on that. I feel very strongly about it. I actually think it’s a very important issue. 

That was April 12. He has made no announcement or statement on it since. He was asked about it again in a follow-up interview on April 27:

Last time we spoke, you said you had an announcement coming over the next two weeks regarding your policy on the abortion pill mifepristone. You haven’t made an announcement yet. Would you like to do so now?

Trump: No, I haven’t. I’ll be doing it over the next week or two. But I don’t think it will be shocking, frankly. But I’ll be doing it over the next week or two. 

Trump is hedging and delaying any statement about abortion medication because his allies in the Heritage Foundation and the Alliance Defending Freedom are eager for Trump to use the power of his office to severely ban or restrict the drugs. 

Trump’s FDA could also move to restrict the use of abortion medication nationwide by recalling drugs like mifepristone from the market. Alternatively, or perhaps in tandem, Trump could ban the interstate transport of such medications—and any equipment that could conceivably be used for an abortion—under the auspices of the Comstock Act, a “morality” law passed back in the 1870s that also banned the use of the mail to send contraception. 

If you think a law from 150 years ago that was passed by only white men—a law that was never really repealed but only shelved because of Roe—can’t suddenly spring back to life and even gain approval from a radicalized court, you weren’t paying attention to what just happened in Arizona, where an 1864 abortion ban was resurrected by that state’s highest court.

And if there was any doubt about how the Project 2025-ers hope to deploy the Comstock Act, the fact that they are now leaving off the name of that act in their literature and only referring to it by its code section number speaks volumes. This is in every way a stealth plan, and they intend to execute upon it quietly and with horrifying effect.

Perhaps the most ominous of Trump’s responses were to questions about how far individual states should be allowed to go in restricting abortions and even tracking and prosecuting women who get them. To Trump, it doesn’t matter because it’s entirely up to each state:

Do you think states should monitor women’s pregnancies so they can know if they’ve gotten an abortion after the ban?

Trump: I think they might do that. Again, you’ll have to speak to the individual states. 

Prosecuting women for getting abortions after the ban. But are you comfortable with it? 

Trump: The states are going to say. It’s irrelevant whether I’m comfortable or not. It’s totally irrelevant, because the states are going to make those decisions. 

Let’s be clear. By these words, Trump is greenlighting the most extreme anti-abortion forces in the GOP-controlled states to be as intrusive as they wish when it comes to women’s reproductive rights and privacy. Trump would approve of laws and policies where pregnancies must be reported to the state, no doubt by co-opting medical professionals in the chain of reporting, in order to ensure illegal abortions did not occur. It’s truly Orwellian in its scope and implications.

He is also signaling that a Trump Justice Department would look the other way when it comes to state incursion into women’s medical decisions and prosecutions of women who obtain abortions. That would be a major shift from the Biden Administration, which has been working hard to ensure federal laws around, for example, the provision of emergency stabilizing medical procedures, including abortion, continue to be mandated in federally-funded hospitals, even where state law conflicts.

Taking a larger view, we have faced a “states’ rights” argument like this before, where a whole class of people are collectively denied fundamental rights and full bodily autonomy, and fall to second tier status or worse within a state, all without intervention by the federal government. That took a Civil War to begin to undo. In Trump’s America, once again he would see the states divide along abortion rights and abortion ban lines, with dire consequences for all women living within the latter.

Migrants and the border

Trump has made border security and the question of migrants a top campaign issue. Indeed, it was so important to keep “chaos at the border” as a talking point that Trump personally torpedoed the bipartisan compromise border security bill designed to solve it. That legislation would have provided critical funding for the Border Patrol while reducing wait times for asylum seekers so that they could be processed more quickly and in many cases repatriated to their home countries if they did not qualify. 

Because Republicans had insisted on “border security” as part of any bill to fund aid to our allies, the compromise contained many painful concessions by Democrats that satisfied even the Senate’s staunchest GOP conservatives. 

Despite this win for the GOP, Trump sank the bill, and along with it any new funding for the border. He did this so he could still hammer Joe Biden on the question of the border and migration through the presidential campaign. But by doing this, Trump turned the GOP’s biggest win into a total fiasco that continues to divide his party today.

Killing the border security bill isn’t enough for Trump, it seems. His proposals on “solving” the migrant issue reach far beyond the border and deep into minority communities to go after all undocumented immigrants. That includes an estimated 11+ million people. 

Here is what he said:

Let’s start with Day One: January 20, 2025. You have said that you will take a suite of aggressive actions on the border and on immigration—

Donald Trump: Yes.

You have vowed to launch the largest deportation operation in American history. Your advisors say that includes—

Trump: Because we have no choice. I don’t believe this is sustainable for a country, what’s happening to us, with probably 15 million and maybe as many as 20 million by the time Biden’s out. 

(Note: DHS and several immigrant rights groups have placed that number somewhere above 11 million, not 15 or 20 as Trump claimed.)

In 1941, the government evacuated and sent to internment camps around 120,000 people of Japanese descent. These barbed wire camps were hastily and poorly constructed, were not weather-proofed against the elements, had poor to no sanitation, and offered no running water. The internment destroyed the lives, businesses, properties and hopes of an entire generation of people, and it marks one of the darkest chapters of U.S. history.

The logistics of the evacuation and internment nearly overwhelmed the War Department. But 120,000 is just 1/100th the number of people Trump is talking about rounding up. Unlike the Japanese Americans, undocumented immigrants would likely go underground rather than be sent to a detention camp to be deported. This then would require mass enforcement against entire communities, along with abusive racial profiling and regular demands upon even legal residents to show their papers and prove they are not “illegals.”

How would Trump accomplish this? Trump claimed he would use “local law enforcement” (i.e., deputizing local police and turning them into federal immigration enforcers, especially in big cities like New York). But then there was this threat, too, to employ actual military forces against migrants seeking to cross the border:

Does that include using the U.S. military? 

Trump: It would. When we talk military, generally speaking, I talk National Guard.

Sir, the Posse Comitatus Act says that you can’t deploy the U.S. military against civilians. Would you override that?

Trump: Well, these aren’t civilians. These are people that aren’t legally in our country. This is an invasion of our country. An invasion like probably no country has ever seen before. 

(Narrator: These are definitely “civilians.”)

So you can see yourself using the military to address this?

Trump: I can see myself using the National Guard and, if necessary, I’d have to go a step further. We have to do whatever we have to do to stop the problem we have. 

[Y]our close aide and adviser Stephen Miller said that part of what it would take to carry out this deportation operation would include new migrant detention camps. 

Trump: It’s possible that we’ll do it to an extent but we shouldn’t have to do very much of it, because we’re going to be moving them out as soon as we get to it. 

To sum up, Trump is promising a militarized solution to the migration issue. This includes mass arrests of more than 11 million undocumented persons, detention camps, deployment and use of the National Guard upon migrants and the border, and quick and likely indiscriminate processing (“moving them out as soon as we get to it”).

This is a nightmare for all affected communities and for immigrant families. It would replace our long history of welcoming immigrants as the lifeblood of our society and engine of our economy with an us/them dystopian one, based on fear and brute, militarized force.

To accomplish this, Trump needs to turn Americans against migrants more than they already are. It is therefore no accident that he has increased his dehumanizing attacks upon immigrants, labeled them criminals, suggested they are disease ridden, and, borrowing a phrase from Nazi Germany, that they are “poisoning the blood of our country.”

Absolving the insurrectionists and inviting more of the same

When the January 6 attack occurred, and Trump stood by and gleefully allowed it to continue to unfold for hours, many wrongly predicted that this was a bridge too far for Republicans. And for a brave few, such as Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, it truly was. Trump had attacked the roots of our democracy and the peaceful transfer of power, and that led a few with backbone and courage to abandon their party altogether.

That wedge, and the dissenters’ principled commitment to democracy and the rule of law, has grown. Though still a distinct minority, many Republicans view January 6, along with the Big Lie about a stolen election that drove that violence, as the point when their support of Trump could no longer be justified.

Others cynically have sought to rehabilitate the insurrectionists and revise the history of that day. (“They were just tourists!”) But Trump has gone further still.

Asked about the January 6 defendants, whom Trump has called “hostages,” here were his responses. And there’s no doubt what he is conveying:

Will you consider pardoning every one of them? 

Trump: I would consider that, yes. 

You would? 

Trump: Yes, absolutely.

And asked specifically about the possibility of future political violence following the election, he at first brushed it aside:

Are you worried about political violence in connection with this November’s election? 

Trump: No. I don’t think you’ll have political violence. 

You don’t expect anything? 

Trump: I think we’re gonna have a big victory. And I think there will be no violence. 

But in the follow-up interview, Trump still left the possibility wide open, even seeming to invite it:

Mr. President, in our last conversation you said you weren't worried about political violence in connection with the November election. You said, “I think we’re going to win and there won’t be violence.” What if you don’t win, sir?

Trump: Well, I do think we’re gonna win. We’re way ahead. I don’t think they’ll be able to do the things that they did the last time, which were horrible. Absolutely horrible. So many, so many different things they did, which were in total violation of what was supposed to be happening. And you know that and everybody knows that. We can recite them, go down a list that would be an arm’s long. But I don’t think we’re going to have that. I think we’re going to win. And if we don’t win, you know, it depends. It always depends on the fairness of an election. (Emphasis added.)

(Narrator: The Democrats didn’t do anything to the last presidential election other than win it.)

We need to be clear-eyed about what he is both promising and projecting. 

On the question of pardons, he is informing dangerous zealots that he not only supports them, but that he will use the power of the presidency to exonerate and free them. That means that they can count on him to do the same if he is president again. It is an invitation to act with impunity, secure in the knowledge that the president himself will save you.

On the question of political violence, to even suggest that “it depends” is the functional equivalent of his “stand back and stand by” statement, made to the Proud Boys on national television during the 2020 debates. That emboldened the extremist group to lead the violent attack on the Capitol, just as Trump’s words today will be seen by his most radicalized followers as a signal to prepare for violence.

Trump can easily call into question the fairness of the 2024 election. He did so without any evidence in 2020, even though he was rejected by the courts in every instance where he alleged fraud. But this time around, he has most Republican voters already falsely believing there was widespread fraud in the last election, and most GOP officials appear willing to fall in line behind whatever false election claims Trump makes.

This means that if and when Trump loses, he will nearly certainly claim it was unfair—even wildly unfair. And that in his mind will justify political violence, just as we saw on January 6.

Voters need to be presented with the stark choice between our long tradition of peaceful transitions of power on the one hand, and chaotic, violent ones becoming the norm on the other. Most voters today, thankfully, will choose the former. They will reject candidates who espouse or condone political violence for any reason.

Trump has now wedged the door open to place the future of our democracy at risk, just as he has with abortion rights and migrant rights. Now it’s our job to ensure those words come back not just to haunt him, but to peel away critical support from women, immigrant communities, and true patriots of all persuasions.