President-elect Donald Trump, in an interview published Thursday, said he will pardon people who took part in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol immediately upon taking office and offered new details about his deportation plans, saying he will use the military “to the maximum level of what the law allows.”
He also suggested he sees a link between vaccinations and rising rates of autism, saying, “There’s something causing it.” He said he’s going to have discussions with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., his pick to be secretary of Health and Human Services and a key vaccine skeptic, on how far to go in discouraging vaccine mandates for schoolchildren.
The interview was with Time, which named him its “Person of the Year” in recognition of his stunning election victory and impending ascension to a second term in the White House.
Mr. Trump described his winning campaign strategy — “I called it 72 days of fury” — and his team revealed the thinking behind his calculation on abortion politics, where he defied GOP orthodoxy and refused to back a ban on the procedure at 16 weeks of pregnancy.
The incoming president said he believes settling violence in the Middle East will be easier to solve than Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
He said he has told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the war with Hamas needs to cool off by the time Mr. Trump is inaugurated next month.
He said he “vehemently” disagreed with Ukraine firing U.S.-provided missiles into Russian territory.
“We’re just escalating this war and making it worse,” he said.
But he said he won’t “abandon” support for Ukraine, saying U.S. backing for the wronged nation is “the only way you’re going to reach an agreement” between the adversaries.
Time, in declaring Mr. Trump its Person of the Year, said he won his election with “a strongman vision, proposing to deport migrants by the millions, dismantle parts of the federal government, seek revenge against his political adversaries, and dismantle institutions that millions of people see as censorious and corrupt.”
Mr. Trump’s team told Time they were worried about his chances after the Democratic National Convention, which saw a fawning press deliver glowing coverage of Vice President Kamala Harris.
“There was this sense of, Is this honeymoon with Kamala Harris going to last all the way until the election?” said Vice President-elect J.D. Vance.
Mr. Trump’s team also described how he moved early on to try to neutralize Democrats’ major attack on the GOP over abortion rights.
Following the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022, officials in GOP-led states have embraced bans, clashing with voters who have approved lenient policies.
Conservatives at the national level argued Mr. Trump should embrace a ban, and he was on the verge of supporting a ban after 16 weeks of pregnancy. But a top aide pointed out that would be harsher than the laws in key states in the election such as Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.
“So we leave it to the states, right?” Mr. Trump concluded.
He told Time he won’t interfere with access to the abortion pill.
“That would be my commitment,” he said.
Mr. Trump didn’t commit to action on the Biden administration’s education policies requiring schools to extend accommodations to transgender students.
“We’re gonna look at everything,” he said.
On immigration, where his pledge to enforce “mass” deportations has galvanized supporters and horrified immigrant rights groups, Mr. Trump said believes he can use the military when the situation is “an invasion.”
“I’ll only do what the law allows, but I will go up to the maximum level of what the law allows,” he said.
Time magazine pressed Mr. Trump on whether deportations would be separated families.
In 2018, Mr. Trump’s zero-tolerance policy applied to new border crossers who came over as families. The parents were prosecuted for illegal entry, which led to their children being separated temporarily. The problem was that the government had no way to reunite the children when the parents were then deported, leaving the children here.
Mr. Trump faces a somewhat different situation with the looming deportations, where those parents aren’t new arrivals coming with children but have often been living here for years and have had children born here, making the kids U.S. citizens.
The president-elect said he isn’t looking for separations in those cases, but wouldn’t rule it out.
“I don’t believe we’ll have to, because we will send the whole family back,” he said.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.