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President-elect Donald J. Trump outlined an aggressive opening plan for his second term in an interview that aired on Sunday, vowing to fulfill his campaign promises to crack down on immigration and to pardon some of his most violent supporters on the first day of his new administration.
In his first sit-down broadcast network interview since being re-elected, Mr. Trump said he would move on the initial day of his term next month to pardon his backers who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and to try to bar automatic citizenship for children born in the United States to immigrant parents.
Mr. Trump also indicated that he would also fire the F.B.I. director, Christopher A. Wray, out of personal pique because “he invaded my home” and was not sufficiently sure at first whether Mr. Trump’s wound during an assassination attempt this year was caused by a bullet or shrapnel. And he said that the members of Congress who investigated his role in the Jan. 6 attack should be prosecuted and thrown behind bars.
“For what they did, honestly, they should go to jail,” Mr. Trump said of former Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, and the rest of the bipartisan House committee that looked into the attack. He said he would not direct his new attorney general or F.B.I. director to pursue it but indicated that he expected them to do it on their own. “I think that they’ll have to look at that,” he said, “but I’m not going to” order them to.
At the same time, speaking with Kristen Welker on “Meet the Press” on NBC, Mr. Trump seemed to signal that he would not appoint a special counsel to investigate President Biden and his family, as he once vowed. And he signaled that he would not take the most assertive position on several other issues, saying that he would not seek to fire the chairman of the Federal Reserve or restrict the availability of abortion pills. And although he vowed to end birthright citizenship, Mr. Trump said he would try to work with Democrats to spare immigrants brought to the country illegally as children, known as Dreamers, from deportation.
“I’m really looking to make our country successful,” Mr. Trump said when asked about investigating Mr. Biden and his family. “I’m not looking to go back into the past. I’m looking to make our country successful. Retribution will be through success.”
Mr. Trump sought to downplay fears of Kash Patel, the far-right loyalist he plans to nominate to take over the F.B.I., who has vowed to “come after” the president-elect’s perceived enemies and named about 60 people he considered “members of the executive branch deep state” as the appendix to a 2023 book.
“No, I don’t think so,” Mr. Trump said when asked if Mr. Patel would pursue investigations against political adversaries. But the incoming president left the door open to it. “If they were crooked, if they did something wrong, if they have broken the law, probably,” he said. “They went after me. You know, they went after me, and I did nothing wrong.”
Mr. Trump’s comments about sending members of the Jan. 6 committee to jail come as Mr. Biden’s top aides are debating whether he should issue blanket pardons before leaving office to people like Ms. Cheney who have drawn the president-elect’s ire. Mr. Biden and his team have grown increasingly concerned that the selection of Mr. Patel indicates that Mr. Trump will follow through on his threats of “retribution” against those who have crossed him.
To install Mr. Patel, Mr. Trump would have to fire Mr. Wray, who has a 10-year term under a law meant to avoid politicizing the F.B.I. Mr. Wray was originally appointed by Mr. Trump in 2017, but the president-elect made clear he was personally aggrieved against him for the F.B.I. search of his Mar-a-Lago estate in 2022 for classified documents that he had improperly taken after leaving the White House, even though the search warrant was approved by a judge.
“I can’t say I’m thrilled with him,” Mr. Trump said. “He invaded my home. I’m suing the country over it. He invaded Mar-a-Lago. I’m very unhappy with the things he’s done.”
He also cited Mr. Wray’s comment after the assassination attempt in July that it was not initially clear whether Mr. Trump was hit by a bullet or shrapnel. “When I was shot in the ear, he said, ‘Oh, maybe it was shrapnel,’” Mr. Trump said. “Where’s the shrapnel coming from? Is it coming from — is it coming from heaven? I don’t think so.”
Mr. Trump did not explicitly say he would fire Mr. Wray, but he left little doubt about it. “It would sort of seem pretty obvious that if Kash gets in, he’s going to be taking somebody’s place, right?” he said.
He also said, however, that he does not plan to fire Jerome H. Powell, the chairman of the Federal Reserve and another Trump appointee with whom he has grown disenchanted. “No, I don’t think so,” Mr. Trump said. “I don’t see it.”
The president-elect said that on his first day in office next month, he would sign a raft of executive actions on the economy, energy and the border. Two specifics that came up during the interview were issuing pardons for Jan. 6 attackers and ending birthright citizenship for children born in the United States.
Asked if he would pardon “everyone” who attacked the Capitol, Mr. Trump said, “Yeah. But I’m going to be acting very quickly.” Pressed, he added, “First day.”
As for birthright citizenship, Mr. Trump said he would try to reverse the constitutional guarantee that anyone born in the United States is a citizen regardless of the status of their parents. Many legal scholars have said the president has no power to overturn the right to citizenship guaranteed by the 14th Amendment, which says that “all persons born” in the United States “are citizens of the United States.”
Mr. Trump was vague about how he would proceed and whether he would seek to reverse the common interpretation of the amendment through executive action that would surely be challenged in the courts. He left open the idea that he would instead have to amend the Constitution, which would be unlikely to happen since it would require either a constitutional convention or the support of two-thirds of both houses of Congress and the approval of three-quarters of the states.
“We’re going to have to get it changed,” Mr. Trump said. “We’ll maybe have to go back to the people. But we have to end it.”
He repeatedly said falsely that “we’re the only country that has it.” In fact, the World Population Review lists 34 other countries that also have unrestricted birthright citizenship, including Canada and Mexico.
But Mr. Trump suggested that he would look for a way to keep the so-called Dreamers in the country. “We have to do something about the Dreamers because these are people that have been brought here at a very young age,” he said. “And many of these are middle-aged people now. They don’t even speak the language of their country. And yes, we’re going to do something about the Dreamers.”
He said he would “work with the Democrats on a plan” and blamed them for not protecting Dreamers. But in fact, it was President Barack Obama who first took executive action in 2012 to spare about 700,000 Dreamers from deportation through a policy called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA.
Mr. Trump, by contrast, tried to rescind the policy, arguing that it was unconstitutional, only to be blocked by the Supreme Court on procedural grounds.
President-elect Donald J. Trump, in his first sit-down broadcast interview since his re-election last month, repeated several false and inaccurate claims on a range of topics that were staples of his 2024 campaign.
In the interview, which aired on Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Mr. Trump miscast the effect of tariffs, vastly overstated the number of unauthorized immigrants released under the Biden administration, falsely claimed that crime was at “an all-time high,” misleadingly described military spending under the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and exaggerated his own polling, among other specious statements.
Here’s a breakdown.
Trade and the economy
Mr. Trump wrongly claimed there was “no inflation” under his first term and that inflation did not begin occurring until a year and a half into the Biden administration. (Annual inflation generally hovered between 1 and 2 percent from 2017 to 2020, and had increased to 4.7 percent in 2021.)
He exaggerated the United States’ trade deficits with Canada and Mexico as $100 billion and $300 billion, describing the figures as a subsidy. (The trade deficit in goods and services was $41 billion with Canada and $162 billion with Mexico; a deficit simply means that one country’s consumers are buying more from the other nation, not giving money away.)
He falsely claimed that European nations “don’t take our cars, they don’t take our food product, they don’t take anything.” (Europe is the United States’ second-largest car export market and American goods exported to Europe totaled almost $415 billion in 2023.)
And he claimed that tariffs “cost Americans nothing.” (Economists overwhelmingly agree that the costs of tariffs are passed on to consumers.)
Immigration
Mr. Trump falsely claimed more than 13,000 immigrants who had committed murder were “released into our country over the last three years.” (The figure, from Immigration and Customs Enforcement data, referred to immigrants who were currently not detained by immigration authorities, though they may be in prisons or jails, and included those who had entered the country over the past 40 years.)
He falsely claimed that prisons in Venezuela “are at the lowest point in terms of emptiness that they’ve ever been.” (Venezuela’s prisons are overcrowded and the population is about level with that of 2021.)
He hyperbolically claimed that unauthorized immigrants in a Colorado town were “literally taking over apartment complexes and doing it with impunity.” (City officials said this had not happened.)
And he falsely claimed that “we’re the only country” that grants citizenship to any child born within its borders. (More than 30 others do.)
Other topics
Mr. Trump falsely claimed that “crime is at an all-time high.” (It is not).
He claimed that he “was able to get hundreds of billions of dollars put into NATO just by a tough attitude.” (He can claim some credit for more countries in the alliance meeting a goal of spending on their own militaries, but they made that pledge in 2014.)
And he claimed that “just prior to Covid coming in, I had polls that were the highest.” (He had a 48 percent approval rating in late February 2020, according to a Gallup poll, lower than all but three of his predecessors dating to Harry S. Truman at a similar time into their presidencies.)
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Representative Mike Turner, an Ohio Republican who is the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, gave a tepid response on CBS’s "Face The Nation" when asked about Trump’s pick for director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard.
“I obviously differ a great deal in a number of areas with both her judgment and her background and experience, but what I do trust is the Senate process,” Turner said. “She will go through the process, and I think there’ll be significant debate and evaluation.”
Representative Byron Donalds, Republican of Florida and a staunch supporter of President-elect Donald J. Trump, said on ABC that the incoming administration would deport “at a minimum” two million undocumented immigrants. “The enticement of coming to America is not going to be what it was under Joe Biden,” he added.
President-elect Donald J. Trump said he has no plans to fire the chair of the Federal Reserve, Jerome H. Powell, addressing an uncertainty that has been hanging over the politically independent central bank.
Mr. Trump said over the summer that he did not plan to fire Mr. Powell, but made that comment somewhat conditional on Mr. Powell doing “the right thing” — presumably lowering interest rates. He was more definitive in a new interview with NBC, airing Sunday morning.
“No, I don’t think so. I don’t see it,” Trump said when asked if he would remove Mr. Powell, whose term as chair expires in May 2026. “I think if I told him to, he would. But if I asked him to, he probably wouldn’t. But if I told him to, he would.”
Mr. Powell has said that he does not think that the president has the legal authority to remove him — a position many lawyers agree with, although the idea has never been tested in courts. Mr. Powell has also said that he would not leave the position if asked.
Fed officials are insulated from the White House, giving them a level of independence meant to allow them the freedom to make hard short-term decisions — like keeping interest rates high — that are good for the longer-term health of the economy.
Mr. Trump originally elevated Mr. Powell to the role of Fed chair in 2017, but quickly soured on his pick: He wanted Mr. Powell’s Fed to lower rates more quickly.
He flirted with firing or demoting the Fed chair, but found that doing so would be legally difficult, if not impossible. He settled for blasting the central bank and its leader on social media and in public remarks, calling Mr. Powell an “enemy” and Fed officials “boneheads.”
President Biden chose in 2021 to renominate Mr. Powell, who is now serving out a four-year leadership term that began the next year.
The interview is over. Trump made news on a few fronts: saying he wants a deal over the "Dreamers"; saying he doesn't plan to fire the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell; claiming he won’t restrict access to abortion pills. But it was his mixed signals that were most revealing. He said he would not direct his Justice Department to prosecute his political enemies. But he also said that Jack Smith was “corrupt” and that the members of the Jan. 6 congressional committee belonged in prison. By picking staunch loyalists like Pam Bondi for attorney general and Kash Patel for F.B.I. director, Trump does not need to issue direct orders.
Welker gets Trump to commit to releasing his full medical records given he’ll be the oldest president to be sworn into office. There are reasons to be skeptical about this, given Trump has given similar assurances in the past and has reverted to releasing brief and vague doctor notes.
Trump does not give an unequivocal yes when asked if he’d commit to the U.S. staying in NATO while he’s in office. “If they’re paying their bills, and if I think they’re doing a fair — they’re treating us fairly, the answer is absolutely I’d stay with NATO,” he says, repeating a statement he’s been making for the last couple of years on the campaign trail.
In this interview, Trump is sending clear public signals to his nominees that he wants retribution, although he is then saying he will not direct them to act. But by saying that Jack Smith is “corrupt” and that members of the Jan. 6 committee belong in prison, Trump is making no secret of what he wants his Justice Department to do.
Welker pushes Trump on whether he’ll fulfill his campaign promise to appoint a “real special prosecutor” to go after President Biden and his family. Trump says that no, he won’t do it, but adds that the decision will be up to Pam Bondi, his pick for attorney general.
Trump is trying to distance himself from any efforts by his administration to investigate his political enemies, saying it will be up to his people at the Justice Department. But Trump appears to have confidence he will have leaders at the department who will do what he wants without having to ask.
Welker asks Trump whether he will direct his choice for F.B.I. leader, Kash Patel, to prosecute people on the list Patel has in his book of 60 people that he calls members of the “deep state.” Trump says no, but he then adds, tellingly: “If they think that somebody was dishonest or crooked or a corrupt politician, I think he probably has an obligation to do it.”
Pressed further on whether Patel will pursue investigations against his political enemies, Trump says, “No, I don’t think so,” but when pushed on whether he wants to see this happen, he makes clear that retribution is still very much on his mind: “If they were crooked, if they did something wrong, if they have broken the law, probably. They went after me. You know, they went after me and I did nothing wrong.”
Asked whether he will restrict the availability of abortion pills when he’s in office, Trump says no, but leaves himself a little wiggle room: “I’ll probably stay with exactly what I’ve been saying for the last two years. And the answer is no,” he says. Welker follows up by asking, “You commit to that?” And Trump says: “Well, I commit. I mean, are — things do — things change.”
Welker presses Trump repeatedly on whether he plans to try to overturn Obamacare again, as he tried in his first term. Trump gives a rambling and unclear answer, but the overall impression is that he does not yet have a plan for a replacement. “If we come up with a better answer, I would present that answer to Democrats and to everybody else and I’d do something about it,” he said.
Trump makes two contradictory statements about his immigration plans. On one hand, asked whether his plan is to deport everyone who is in the U.S. illegally: “I think you have to do it.” But later, when asked about the “Dreamers” — people who were brought to America illegally as children — Trump claims he “will work with the Democrats on a plan” to help the Dreamers stay in the country.
Trump says he will not try to force the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, to step down. Trump does not have the legal authority to do that, so doing so would force a legal fight that would most likely roil markets and end up at the Supreme Court. Asked whether he plans to pressure Powell to quit, Trump says, “No, I don’t.”
If any chief executives were hoping Trump would back away from his promised tariffs, this interview would have put an end to that. Trump insists that tariffs are “beautiful,” that they’ll make America rich, cost Americans nothing and he’s claimed, absurdly, that he’s “stopped wars with tariffs.”
In his "Meet the Press" interview, Trump continues to say he disagrees with economists who say his tariffs will make goods more expensive for American consumers. But in her interview, Kristen Welker extracts a notable concession: Pressed on whether he can guarantee American families won’t pay more as a result of tariffs, Trump says: “I can’t guarantee anything. I can’t guarantee tomorrow.”
This is Donald Trump’s first big TV interview since winning the election more than a month ago. That alone is remarkable; in the nine years I’ve covered Trump I’ve never seen him so willing to cede the spotlight as he’s been over the past month. Advisers say he was at the brink of physical exhaustion at the end of the campaign and has been content to mostly relax at Mar-a-Lago and receive a constant stream of flatterers, including world leaders.
NBC released a preview of the interview that shows Trump standing by his embattled pick to lead the Pentagon, Pete Hegseth. Kristen Welker is likely to grill Trump about his other choices, including Kash Patel to lead the F.B.I., and press him on some of his most controversial plans, such as his desire to exact revenge against his political enemies.
President-elect Donald J. Trump made a splashy re-entry onto the global stage on Saturday as he attended the reopening ceremony of the Notre-Dame Cathedral, sitting in the front row between President Emmanuel Macron of France and the French first lady, Brigitte Macron.
Mr. Trump was joined by Elon Musk, who is helping run Mr. Trump’s new government-efficiency panel. President Biden, whose international relevance wanes at the close of his term, was not present. Jill Biden, his wife and first lady, took her spot next to Mrs. Macron.
Mr. Trump’s first foreign trip since winning the presidential election in November provided a diplomatic undercurrent to the celebration of the cathedral, renovated since a 2019 fire. Before the ceremony, Mr. Trump arrived at Mr. Macron’s office at Élysée Palace, where the men shook hands and briefly hugged. Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, also met with Mr. Macron and Mr. Trump there, where he lobbied for Mr. Trump’s support in the war against Russia.
Mr. Zelensky and Mr. Trump last met in late September, when Mr. Trump was still a presidential candidate. Mr. Zelensky stood beside Mr. Trump silently that day as Mr. Trump told reporters that both sides wanted the Russia-Ukraine war to end, including its instigator, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
Mr. Trump was among the last major leaders to arrive at Notre-Dame on Saturday, and when he did, he was greeted with muted applause. Mr. Zelensky had received a louder ovation.
What came next was more akin to a scene on the campaign trail: Mr. Trump walked down a rope line of world leaders, shaking their hands one by one, as the largely seated audience behind them watched. Some clutched their phones to record the moment. Afterward, Mr. Trump took a seat by himself, until the Macrons sat on either side of him.
Mr. Macron was eager to use the world stage to celebrate his government’s success in restoring the cathedral with a speed that critics had not expected. But the reopening arrived at an untimely moment for the government: Michel Barnier, France’s prime minister, lost a no-confidence vote on Wednesday, leaving it rudderless. Mr. Barnier was forced to resign, while Mr. Macron must pick his successor.
Mr. Trump also met on Saturday with Prince William in Paris.
Many nations are bracing for a second Trump administration, and some foreign leaders have already made clear their interest in working with the president-elect. Mr. Trump spoke with Mr. Macron by phone at least once as he planned his trip to Paris.
In the past, Mr. Macron has showered Mr. Trump with flattery, and he invited him to attend Bastille Day ceremonies in 2017. But their relationship deteriorated in 2018 when Mr. Macron supported the idea of a true European military defense, one that could counter rivals like Russia but also the United States.
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine met with President-elect Donald J. Trump in Paris on Saturday, the first face-to-face encounter between the two since Mr. Trump won the U.S. presidential election last month after claiming that he would end the war in 24 hours.
Mr. Trump and Mr. Zelensky were brought together by President Emmanuel Macron of France at the Élysée Palace on Saturday evening, ahead of the Notre-Dame Cathedral’s grand reopening. It was a diplomatic coup for the French leader, who is otherwise facing a political crisis at home after his government fell this week.
While it was not immediately clear what was said in the meeting, Mr. Zelensky was expected to press Ukraine’s case to Mr. Trump, amid concerns that his pledge to end the war quickly could leave Kyiv sacrificing substantial territory to Russia and lacking the security guarantees needed to deter future aggression.
Mr. Zelensky said afterward that it had been a “productive meeting” and he thanked Mr. Trump for his determination and Mr. Macron for organizing the encounter.
“We talked about our people, the situation on the battlefield and a just peace for Ukraine. We all want to end this war as quickly and fairly as possible,” the Ukrainian leader said in a statement, adding that they had “agreed to continue working together.”
The meeting appeared to be part of a broader diplomatic push by Ukraine to engage with Mr. Trump’s incoming administration and influence its plans to end to the war with Russia in a way that aligns as much as possible with Kyiv’s interests. Earlier this week, a delegation of senior Ukrainian officials traveled to the United States to meet with several of Mr. Trump’s key appointees.
“What is happening now is just the first act of a prelude to the negotiations to come,” Volodymyr Fesenko, a Ukrainian political analyst, wrote in a post on Facebook about the Ukrainian delegation’s visit to the United States.
Both Mr. Trump and Mr. Zelensky were slated to attend the reopening of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, but it remained uncertain until the last moment whether they would meet. They eventually spoke at the Élysée Palace, in what appeared to be a carefully choreographed entrance.
Mr. Macron greeted Mr. Trump at the Élysée Palace at 4:45 p.m. local time. Around 45 minutes later, Mr. Zelensky’s car pulled into the palace courtyard. The Ukrainian president stepped out, ascended the red-carpeted stairs, and entered the 18th-century building to join the French and American leaders.
They posed for pictures ahead of the trilateral meeting, which lasted about 30 minutes. “United States, Ukraine, and France. Together on this historic day. Gathered for Notre-Dame. Let us continue our joint efforts for peace and security,” Mr. Macron wrote in a social media post which included a picture of them talking under the gilded halls of the Élysée Palace.
Then the three leaders shook hands at they exited the palace, heading to the reopening ceremony of Notre-Dame Cathedral.
The event had been seen by Ukraine as a chance to press its case to the dozens of world leaders in attendance. Mr. Zelensky said he had met with Karl Nehammer, the Chancellor of Austria, and Salome Zourabichvili, the president of Georgia.
Sounding out Mr. Trump on his plans to end the war has been a top priority for Ukraine. These plans have so far been unclear, but officials in Kyiv are concerned that Mr. Trump’s vague pledge to end the war in 24 hours could result in Russia keeping the territory it has captured and ignoring Ukraine’s demand to join NATO as a security guarantee to prevent further attacks.
Ukraine’s outreach to Mr. Trump’s team has coincided with an apparent shift in Kyiv’s public stance on peace talks. After years of vowing not to cede territory to Russia, Mr. Zelensky has recently suggested he would consider doing so as a way to end the war, in return for NATO membership. Ukraine, he added, would then seek to regain its occupied territory through negotiations.
The change in position has been seen as a way for Ukraine to show Mr. Trump that it is ready to make concessions as part of negotiations. By contrast, Ukraine officials have insisted that Russia didn’t want to engage in negotiations, especially as its troops are steadily gaining ground on the battlefield.
Before Saturday’s meeting, Mr. Zelensky had already spoken with Mr. Trump three times this year: in a phone call over the summer, during a meeting in New York in September and in another call shortly after Mr. Trump’s election last month.
In an interview with Sky News last week, Mr. Zelensky said he wanted to work with Mr. Trump “directly” and was open to his proposals. “I want to share with him ideas, and I want to hear from his ideas,” he said.