President-elect Donald Trump, in his first television
interview since his surprise election victory, repeated his vows to
build a wall across America's southern border, deport criminal illegal
aliens, and repeal and replace ObamaCare.
PRESIDENT-ELECT TRUMP WILLING TO KEEP PARTS OF OBAMACARE
But Trump also appeared to back off from commiting to
build a solid wall, telling CBS' "60 Minutes" the barrier might look
more like a fence in spots.
"Certain areas, a wall is more appropriate," Trump
told interviewer Lesley Stahl. "I'm very good at this, it's called
construction."
Trump emphasized that securing the border is his very
first immigration priority, but he also promised to deport people
living in the country illegally who had committed crimes beyond their
immigration offenses.
TRUMP'S PRESIDENTIAL PEN COULD REMAKE SUPREME COURT AGENDA
"What we are going to do is get the people that are
[criminals] and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers,"
Trump said. "We have a lot of these people. Probably two million, it
could be even three million. We are getting them out of our country or
we are going to incarcerate.
After the border is secured and after everything gets
normalized," Trump added, "we're going to make a determination on
[other undocumented immigrants] ... But before we make that
determination ... we want to secure our border.
Early in the GOP primaries, Trump had vowed to
immediately deport all 11 million people living in the country
illegally. But his comments Sunday echoed House Speaker Paul Ryan,
R-Wis., who told CNN that the Republican administration was "not looking
for mass deportations."
"We are not going to do that," Ryan emphasized in the interview that aired earlier Sunday.
The real estate mogul also echoed remarks he made to
the Wall Street Journal earlier this week, in which he said he favors
keeping the prohibition against insurers denying coverage because of
patients’ existing conditions, and a provision that allows parents to
provide years of additional coverage for children on their insurance
policies.
"It'll be just fine. We're not going to have, like, a
two day period and we're not going to have-- a two-year period where
there's nothing," Trump said.
Trump also appeared to back away from his promise to
appoint a special prosecutor to investigate his Democratic opponent,
Hillary Clinton, over her use of a private email server. Trump made such
a promise during the second presidential debate against Clinton during a
rhetorical duel that ended with Trump saying if he was president,
"you'd be in jail."
"She did some bad things, I mean she did some bad
things," Trump said, to which Stahl responded, "I know, but a special
prosecutor?"
"I don't want to hurt them, I don't want to hurt them," Trump said. "They’re, they’re good people. I don't want to hurt them."
Regarding another of his campaign promises, Trump
vowed to nominate a Supreme Court justice that would be pro-life and
pro-Second Amendment. However, the president-elect showed no interest in
re-litigating last year's Supreme Court decision legalizing gay
marraige, an issue of departure between him and Vice President-elect
Mike Pence.
"It's irrelevant because it was already settled. It's
law. It was settled in the Supreme Court. I mean it’s done," Trump
said, later adding, "I'm fine with that."
Trump touched on the protests that have broken out
across the nation since his election, complaning that the coverage
represented a "double standard."
"If Hillary had won and if my people went out and
protested, everybody would say, 'Oh, that's a terrible thing,'" he said.
"And it would have been a much different attitude. There is a different
attitude."
However the president-elect said that he was
"saddened" by reports that some of his supporters had harassed
minorities since Tuesday's vote.
"And I say, 'Stop it.' ... I will say this, and I will say right to the cameras: Stop it."
Trump also told "60 Minutes" he would eschew the $400,000 annual salary for the president, taking only $1 a year.