President-elect Donald Trump rang the bell Thursday at the New York Stock Exchange, celebrated Time magazine’s 2024 Person of the Year designation and delivered new details on his campaign and plans in office, including a vow to issue a Day 1 pardon to people who took part in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
In an extensive interview with Time, Mr. Trump said he would use the military “to the maximum level of what the law allows” to carry out his plan to deport illegal immigrants.
He suggested a potential link between childhood vaccinations and rising rates of autism. There’s “something causing it,” he said.
Mr. Trump said he and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., his nominee for health and human services secretary, may take action to reduce vaccine mandates for schoolchildren.
Mr. Trump entered the New York Stock Exchange to chants of “USA.” The bell-ringing coincided with Time magazine’s second announcement of Mr. Trump as its Person of the Year.
“I think we’re going to have a tremendous run,” he said. “The economy is going to be very strong. We do have to solve some problems.”
He celebrated his “surprising” relationship with China, which he moved to cement this week with an invite to President Xi Jinping to attend his inauguration next month. Although Mr. Xi is unlikely to attend, the symbolic invite promotes a dialogue between the leaders, incoming White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News.
In the interview with Time, Mr. Trump and his team described their winning strategy for the November election and laid out plans for handling some of the significant issues they will face in the early days of his presidency.
He said he believes settling violence in the Middle East will be easier than ending the Russia-Ukraine war.
Mr. Trump said he has told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the war with Hamas needs to cool off by the time of his inauguration.
He said he “vehemently” disagreed with Ukraine’s firing of U.S.-provided missiles into Russian territory.
“We’re just escalating this war and making it worse,” he said.
He said he won’t “abandon” support for Ukraine because U.S. backing for the wronged nation is “the only way you’re going to reach an agreement” between the adversaries.
In declaring Mr. Trump as its 2024 Person of the Year, Time said he won the presidential 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.”
Members of Mr. Trump’s team told Time they were worried about his chances after the Democratic National Convention when a fawning press delivered 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’ attack on Republicans over abortion rights.
Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, officials in Republican-led states have embraced bans and clashed with voters who approve of lenient policies.
Conservatives at the national level argued that Mr. Trump should embrace a national abortion ban. He was on the verge of supporting a ban after 16 weeks of pregnancy, but a top aide pointed out that it 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.
He didn’t commit to action on the Biden administration’s education policies requiring schools to extend accommodations to transgender students.
“We’re going to look at everything,” he said.
On immigration, where his pledge to enforce “mass” deportations has galvanized supporters and horrified immigrant rights groups, he said 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 pressed Mr. Trump on whether deportations would separate families.
In 2018, Mr. Trump’s zero-tolerance policy applied to illegal border crossers who came into the U.S. as families. The parents were prosecuted for unlawful entry, which led to a temporary separation from their children. The problem was that the government had no way to reunite the children when the parents were deported.
Mr. Trump faces a different situation with the looming deportations of parents who aren’t new arrivals but have been living in the U.S. for years. Children born in the U.S. automatically become citizens.
Mr. Trump said he isn’t seeking separations in those cases but won’t rule it out.
“I don’t believe we’ll have to because we will send the whole family back,” he said.
• Mallory Wilson contributed to this report.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
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