The Dictatorship

Trump, in a new interview, says he doesn’t know if he backs due process rights

Published

1 year ago

May 5, 2025

Trump, in a new interview, says he doesn’t know if he backs due process rights

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — President Donald Trump is circumspect about his duties to uphold due process rights laid out in the Constitution, saying in a new interview that he does not know whether U.S. citizens and noncitizens alike deserve that guarantee.

He also said he does not think military force will be needed to make Canada the “51st state” and played down the possibility he would look to run for a third term in the White House.

The comments in a wide-ranging, and at moments combative, interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” came as the Republican president’s efforts to quickly enact his agenda face sharper headwinds with Americans just as his second administration crossed the 100-day mark, according to a recent poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Trump, however, made clear that he is not backing away from a to-do list that he insists the American electorate broadly supported when they elected him in November.

Here are some of the highlights from the interview with NBC’s Kristen Welker that was taped Friday at his Mar-a-Lago property in Florida and aired Sunday.

Jennifer Vasquez Sura, the wife of Kilmar Abrego Garcia of Maryland, who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador, speaks during a news conference at CASA's Multicultural Center in Hyattsville, Md., Friday, April 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana) — Jennifer Vasquez Sura, the wife of Kilmar Abrego Garcia of Maryland, who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador, speaks during a news conference at CASA’s Multicultural Center in Hyattsville, Md., Friday, April 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Trump doesn’t commit to due process

Critics on the left have tried to make the case that Trump is chipping away at due process in the United States. Most notably, they cite the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man who was living in Maryland when he was mistakenly deported to El Salvador and imprisoned without communication.

Trump says Abrego Garcia is part of a violent transnational gang. The Republican president has sought to turn deportation into a test case for his campaign against illegal immigration despite a Supreme Court order saying the administration must work to return Abrego Garcia to the U.S.

Asked in the interview whether U.S. citizens and noncitizens both deserve due process as laid out in the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution, Trump was noncommittal.

“I don’t know. I’m not, I’m not a lawyer. I don’t know,” Trump said when pressed by Welker.

The Fifth Amendment provides “due process of law,” meaning a person has certain rights when it comes to being prosecuted for a crime. Also, the 14th Amendment says no state can “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

Trump said he has “brilliant lawyers … and they are going to obviously follow what the Supreme Court said.”

He said he was pushing to deport “some of the worst, most dangerous people on Earth,” but that courts are getting in his way.

“I was elected to get them the hell out of here, and the courts are holding me from doing it,” Trump said.

President Donald Trump arrives to give a commencement address at the University of Alabama, Thursday, May 1, 2025, in Tuscaloosa, Ala.(AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

Military action against Canada is ‘highly unlikely’

The president has repeatedly threatened that he intends to make Canada the “51st state.”

Before his White House meeting on Tuesday with newly elected Canadian Prime Minister Mark CarneyTrump is not backing away from the rhetoric that has angered Canadians.

Trump, however, told NBC that it was “highly unlikely” that the U.S. would need to use military force to make Canada the 51st state.

He offered less certainty about whether his repeated calls for the U.S. to take over Greenland from NATO-ally Denmark can be achieved without military action.

“Something could happen with Greenland,” Trump said. “I’ll be honest, we need that for national and international security. … I don’t see it with Canada. I just don’t see it, I have to be honest with you.”

President bristles at recession forecasts

Trump said the U.S. economy is in a “transition period” but he expects it to do “fantastically” despite the economic turmoil sparked by his tariffs.

He offered sharp pushback when Welker noted that some Wall Street analysts now say the chances of a recession are increasing.

“Well, you know, you say, some people on Wall Street say,” Trump said. “Well, I tell you something else. Some people on Wall Street say that we’re going to have the greatest economy in history.”

He also deflected blame for the 0.3% decline in the U.S. economy in the first quarter. He said he was not responsible for it.

“I think the good parts are the Trump economy and the bad parts are the Biden economy because he’s done a terrible job,” referring to his Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden.

Trump doubled down on his recent comments at a Cabinet meeting that children might have to have two dolls instead of 30, denying that is an acknowledgment his tariffs will lead to supply shortages.

“I’m just saying they don’t need to have 30 dolls. They can have three. They don’t need to have 250 pencils. They can have five.”

Vice President JD Vance departs after speaking during a tour at Nucor Steel Berkeley in Huger, S.C., Thursday, May 1, 2025. (Kevin Lamarque/Pool Photo via AP)

Trump plays down third-term talk

The president has repeatedly suggested he could seek a third term in the White House even though the 22nd Amendment of the Constitution says that “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice.”

Trump told NBC there is considerable support for him to run for a third term.

“But this is not something I’m looking to do,” Trump said. “I’m looking to have four great years and turn it over to somebody, ideally a great Republican, a great Republican to carry it forward.”

Trump’s previous comments about a third term sometimes seem more about provoking outrage on the political left. The Trump Organization is even selling red caps with the words “Trump 2028.”

But at moments, he has suggested he was seriously looking into a third term. In a late March phone interview with NBCTrump said, “I’m not joking. There are methods which you could do it.”

President Donald Trump speaks during a cabinet meeting at the White House, Wednesday, April 30, 2025, in Washington, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio, left, and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, look on. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

So JD Vance in 2028? Marco Rubio? Not so fast.

Trump said in the interview that Vice President JD Vance is doing a “fantastic job” and is “brilliant.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio, whom Trump last week tasked to simultaneously serve as acting national security adviseris “great,” the president said.

But Trump said it is “far too early” to begin talking about his potential successor.

He is confident that his “Make America Great Again” movement will flourish beyond his time in the White House.

“You look at Marco, you look at JD Vance, who’s fantastic,” Trump said. “You look at — I could name 10, 15, 20 people right now just sitting here. No, I think we have a tremendous party. And you know what I can’t name? I can’t name one Democrat.”

National Security Advisor Mike Waltz speaks during a television interview at the White House, Thursday, May 1, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Hegseth is ‘totally safe’

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has been under fire for his participation in Signal text chains in which sensitive information about military planning was shared. But Trump said he is not looking to replace his Pentagon chief.

“No. Not even a little bit. No. Pete’s going to be great,” Trump said. Hegseth’s job is “totally safe.”

The president also said his decision to nominate national security adviser Mike Waltz to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations was not punishment for starting the chain to which Waltz inadvertently added a reporter.

“No. I just think he’ll do a nice job in the new position,” Trump said. He said his decision to have Rubio take over Waltz’s duties will likely be temporary.

“Marco’s very busy doing other things, so he’s not going to keep it long term. We’re going to put somebody else in,” Trump said, adding that it would nonetheless be possible to do both jobs indefinitely. “You know, there’s a theory. Henry Kissinger did both. There’s a theory that you don’t need two people. But I think I have some really great people that could do a good job.”

One person he said he is not considering for the post? Top policy aide Stephen Miller.

“Well, I’d love to have Stephen there, but that would be a downgrade,” he said. “Stephen is much higher on the totem pole than that, in my opinion.”

Trump insists he’s not profiting from the presidency, plans to donate his salary once again

Trump denied he is profiting from the presidency, even as he continues to promote a series of business ventures, including cryptocurrency holdings.

“I’m not profiting from anything. All I’m doing is, I started this long before the election. I want crypto. I think crypto’s important because if we don’t do it, China’s going to. And it’s new, it’s very popular, it’s very hot,” Trump said, adding that he hasn’t even “even looked” at how much he’s made from the venture.

Just days before taking office, Trump launched his own meme coin, which surged in value after it announced that top holders would be invited to an exclusive dinner at the president’s Washington-area golf club later this month and a tour of the White House. He also helped launch World Liberty Financial, another cryptocurrency venture, last year.

That’s in addition to a long list of other business ventures, from Trump Media & Technology Group, which runs his Truth Social site, to branded sneakers, watches and colognes and perfumes.

“Being president probably cost me money if you really look,” Trump said. “In fact, I do something that no other president has done, they think maybe George Washington has done.”

He added: “I contribute my entire salary to the government, back to the government. And I’m doing it again.”

Another TikTok deal extension

Trump said he is open to extending the deadline for a deal on TikTok once again.

“I’d like to see it done,” he said. “I have a little warm spot in my heart for TikTok. TikTok is — it’s very interesting, but it’ll be protected.

He later added: “If it needs an extension, I would be willing to give it an extension, might not need it.”

Last month, Trump used executive action to keep TikTok running in the U.S. for another 75 days to give his administration more time to broker a deal to bring the social media platform under American ownership.

White House officials had believed they were close to a deal in which the app’s operations would have been spun off into a new company based in the U.S. and owned and operated by a majority of American investors. But Beijing hit the brakes after Trump slapped wide-ranging tariffs on nations across the globe.

“We actually have a deal. We have a group of purchasers, very substantial people. They’re going to pay a lot of money. It’s a good thing for us. It’s a good thing for China. It’s going to be, I think, very good,” he said. “But because of the fact that I’ve essentially cut off China right now with the tariffs that are so high that they’re not going to be able to do much business with the United States. But if we make a deal with China I’m sure that’ll be a subject, and it’ll be a very easy subject to solve.”

___

Associated Press writer Jill Colvin in New York contributed to this report.

The Dictatorship

What Tom Emmer said about Somalis was racist. What’s worse is he doesn’t believe it.

Published

16 hours ago

June 27, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

What Tom Emmer said about Somalis was racist. What’s worse is he doesn’t believe it.

Jun. 26, 2026, 9:03 PM EDT

ByMichael Tisserand

There was a time when President Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans didn’t think House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-Minn., had a sufficient understanding of who his enemies ought to be. But in remarks he made Wednesday at a Capitol Hill event sponsored by Ralph Reed’s Faith & Freedom Coalition, Emmer did his best to signal that Trump’s enemies are his enemies, too.

Emmer’s 11-minute talk, during which he expressed racism and transphobia and railed against abortion, also served as yet another contrast to the memory of what Republicans in Minnesota used to be. The name of the state party used to be Independent-Republicansand the late U.S. Sen. Dave Durenberger used to describe the state party’s worldview, without irony, as progressive Republicanism.

Emmer’s talk served as yet another contrast to the memory of what Republicans in Minnesota used to be.

That party is long gone. At Wednesday’s event, Emmer theatrically dismissed a few sheets of paper he said were his talking points and proclaimed, Trump-like, that he was going rogue. He took aim at transgender youth (“there’s a reason why Sodom and Gomorrah was destroyed”), at “elite radical lefties,” at “evil Marxists,” at the media, called his state’s abortion laws “as bad as North Korea” and called the state itself the “People’s Republic of Minnesota.”

But Emmer earned some of the most enthusiastic applause in his racist rant against the state’s large Somali American population. “Sometimes Minnesotans are so afraid that you’re going to call us a racist, you’re going to call us an Islamophobe,” he said, before saying, “But I’m done being careful. Even the least bit careful.”

He said, “I don’t really care where you come from. But if come to this great country, you have to understand, you’re coming here to be an American.” Somalis “don’t assimilate,” he said, “And if they don’t assimilate, then they should go the hell back to where they came from.”

Among the people who responded angrily to Emmer’s slander of Somalis was Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., who was born in Somalia. “I assimilated all the way to Congress and this idiot still tells me to go back to where I came from,” she wrote on X.

In the debacle that followed Kevin McCarthy being voted out of the House speakership in 2023, Emmer was not elected to replace him because, by MAGA standards, he was too moderate. Trump called him a “Globalist RINO” and was still fuming that after Joe Biden won the race for president in 2020, Emmer voted to certify that election.

Emmer has worked harder to be seen as MAGA since then. In December, he appeared on “Varney & Co.” on Fox Business to support an Immigration and Customs Enforcement surge that made Somalis among its primary targets and became known as Operation Metro Surge. He offered up conspiracy theories and lies about Somali Americans committing 80% of the crime in the Twin Cities. He said money was being stolen from Minnesota state and federal programs to fund the Somali-based terrorist group al-Shabab.

When he signed up with the so-called Sharia Free America Caucus in February, he railed against letting “anti-American ideologies take root in our communities” and said he had been fighting against the nonexistent threat of Sharia law since he was a state legislator. I was unable to find stories of Emmer as a state legislator fearmongering about Sharia law. However, in 2015, when one of Emmer’s fellow Republicans was being rightly rebuked for attending an anti-Muslim event in St. Cloud, Emmer was a voice of reason and tolerance. He wanted his constituents to know that Somali Americans were contributing to the Minnesota communities they had made home and that they were “some of the fastest-assimilating populations.”

That same year, Emmer joined then-Rep. Keith Ellison, the Democrat who’s now the state’s attorney general, to found the Congressional Somalia Caucus: to help Somali Americans here and to promote peace and stability in Somalia.

Now Ellison is taking the lead in legal challenges against the ICE assaults Emmer champions.

This is the ticket into MAGA world: an embrace of abdication of decency and a necessary rejection of the spirit of welcome and tolerance one once held.

This is the ticket into MAGA world.

In April, a west central Minnesota event called “Understanding Immigration: A Community Conversation,” included Ayan Omar, a Somali American from St. Cloud, as a speaker. She works as equity director for the public schools and has been active in interfaith dialogues in the city.

Omar spoke of coming to the U.S. as a child, learning English by watching “The Simpsons” and learning self-value by watching “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood.” The message from Mr. Rogers, she said, was especially important because “I just wanted to cower and hide away because I stood out. Not only because I was a Somali-American refugee, but I was also poor.” It was learning about Frederick Douglass that inspired her to become a teacher.

What she was describing was the process of her becoming more and more American. Countless other Somali Americans have had similar experiences. OEmmer knows that.

And not so long ago, he wasn’t afraid to say it.

Michael Tisserand

Michael Tisserand is a Minnesota-based writer whose works include “Krazy,” a biography of cartoonist George Herriman, and Sugarcane Academy, a memoir of his family’s experiences of Hurricane Katrina. With support from a Guggenheim Fellowship, he is currently writing a book about Charlie Chaplin and “The Great Dictator,” for Oxford University Press.

The Dictatorship

Harvey Weinstein’s California rape conviction upheld, resentencing ordered

Published

16 hours ago

June 27, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Harvey Weinstein’s California rape conviction upheld, resentencing ordered

An appeals court on Friday upheld Harvey Weinstein’s2022 rape and sexual assault conviction in California, but ordered the trial judge who gave him 16 years in prison to resentence him.

A three-judge panel from California’s 2nd District Court of Appeal unanimously issued the decision, saying his trial judge did not violate the former movie magnate’s constitutional rights.

“We reject his attempts to disturb the jury’s guilty verdicts,” the judges wrote in their opinion.

Weinstein spokesperson Juda Engelmayer said in an email that “We are disappointed by today’s decision and respectfully disagree with the Court of Appeal’s conclusions regarding the fairness of Mr. Weinstein’s trial. At the same time, the court correctly recognized that his sentence cannot stand.”

The decision came a day after prosecutors in New York decided Weinstein would not face a fourth trial there, dropping the #MeToo-era case after the accuser said she could not bear to testify again.

The California panel said that resentencing was necessary because the judge that sentenced him considered New York convictions that were later thrown out as an aggravating factor. California’s attorney general agreed.

Weinstein, 74, still stands convicted of another sexual felony in New York, and he remains behind bars awaiting a September sentencing there. Prosecutors there are seeking a 20-year prison term.

In California, Weinstein was convicted in December 2022 of one count of rape and two counts of sexual assault against an Italian model and actor known during the trial as Jane Doe 1. He would serve his new sentence there only after his New York term is complete.

After the trial, Jane Doe 1 came forward under her name, Evgeniya Chernyshova, when she sued Weinstein in civil court.

The Associated Press does not typically name people who say they have been sexually abused unless they come forward publicly as Chernyshova did. Her attorney also said she consented to being named.

Chernyshova testified that Weinstein arrived uninvited to her hotel room during the 2013 LA Italia Film Festival and assaulted her.

Weinstein’s defense argued that Weinstein deserved a new trial because Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Lisa B. Lench wrongly prevented his trial lawyers from asking about Facebook messages between Chernyshova and festival head Pascal Vicedomini that would have shown they had a sexual relationship.

The questioning would have demonstrated that she perjured herself when she said she and Vicedomini were just friends and colleagues, the defense said. And the lawyers argued it would have bolstered their assertion that she was not even in her room on the night of the alleged assault.

“The lower court all but gutted Mr. Weinstein’s defense,” attorney Jennifer Bonjean told the appeals judges at April 23 oral arguments.

But the appeals court said in its ruling that Weinstein did make the arguments he wanted during the trial based on other evidence, including another set of Facebook messages that Lench allowed.

“Thus, there was no denial of Weinstein’s constitutional right to present a defense,” the panel wrote in its opinion.

The three judges also found that Weinstein’s lawyers failed to adhere to California’s rape shield law prohibiting evidence of an accuser’s sexual history when they tried to introduce the messages. Weinstein’s lawyers had argued that the shield law was not pertinent because they wanted to use the messages only to impeach the witness’s credibility.

And the appeals judges said testimony from accusers describing sexual assaults Weinstein was not charged with was appropriate, and allowed under state law.

Before his sentencing, Weinstein told the judge that this was a “made-up story” from a woman he had never met.

The Los Angeles jury acquitted Weinstein of the sexual battery of a massage therapist and failed to reach verdicts on counts involving two other women.

“This is not the end of the appellate process,” Engelmayer said in his email Friday. “We intend to seek review in the California Supreme Court because we continue to believe significant legal errors affected the proceedings and warrant further review.”

The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office said it would not have comment on the decision until the office reviewed it.

An email seeking comment from Chernyshova’s attorney was not immediately answered.

The Dictatorship

Haitians with Temporary Protected Status deserved better from the Supreme Court

Published

16 hours ago

June 27, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Jun. 26, 2026, 8:14 PM EDT

ByGarry Pierre-Pierre

One of the first people, and the very first doctor, to publicly receive a Covid-19 vaccine in the United States was Dr. Yves Duroseauthe chair of emergency medicine at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan.

At a time when fear had emptied city streets and refrigerated trucks were lined up near hospital loading docksthat son of Haiti was a face of hope.

For Haitians, that image carried a deeper resonance. Ours is a community that America has often noticed only in moments of crisis. For once, the country was looking at a Haitian because he represented hope.

Ours is a community that America often noticed only in moments of crisis.

That memory from five and a half years ago is one reason the Supreme Court’s decision Thursday allowing the Trump administration to end Temporary Protected Status for hundreds of thousands of Haitians and Syrians hit me so hard. Not with anger, but with deep sadness.

When I took the oath of citizenship decades ago, I believed America rewarded commitment with belonging. I still want to believe that. Thursday’s ruling suggests that, for some immigrants, the word “temporary” didn’t just describe their legal status but the nature of America’s welcome.

The first TPS recipients from Haiti arrived after the magnitude 7 earthquake that devastated Port-au-Prince and killed hundreds of thousands of people in 2010. Today, Haiti faces a different catastrophe. Armed gangs control much of the capitalthousands have been killed or displaced and the State Department continues to warn Americans not to travel there.

For many TPS holders, the country they fled has not recovered. In many ways, it has become even more dangerous.

They believed something basic: that the United States would not send them back to a country engulfed by political violence, armed gangs and institutional collapse. TPS was created for those for whom returning home is unsafe. That humanitarian commitment should matter just as much as the lives those TPS holders have built since arriving.

They waited for Congress to do what some members had pushed for for years: create a pathway from temporary protection to permanent belonging. Instead, the years passed. Children became adults. Mortgages were paid. Careers were built. Entire lives unfolded while Washington postponed action. Temporary Protected Status became less a bridge than a waiting room. The finish line kept moving. Now, for many, it has disappeared altogether.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, Haitian nurses, home health aides and other essential workers were hailed as heroes. Their work was indispensable then, and healthcare leaders say it remains indispensable today.

This dependence is not sentimental. It is measurable. The Boston Globe, citing data from the National Domestic Workers Alliancereported that roughly 13,000 Haitian TPS holders work as nursing assistants each day, caring for an estimated 65,000 patients.

According to a report by Massachusetts lawmakers Sen. Ed Markey and Rep. Ayanna Pressley, ending TPS for Haitians “threatens to seriously disrupt the health care, senior care and disability care workforces amid a nationwide health care crisis and persistent staffing shortages.”

Roughly 13,000 Haitian TPS holders work as nursing assistants each day, caring for an estimated 65,000 patients.

There is nothing temporary about the lives these TPS holders have built. There is nothing temporary about paying taxes for decades, buying a home, planting a garden or knowing your neighbors by name. There is nothing temporary about raising children who begin each school day by pledging allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. There is nothing temporary about risking your life to care for strangers during a once-in-a-century pandemic.

I never imagined that, decades after taking my own oath of citizenship, I would be writing about a generation of immigrants who walked that same path with the same faith only to discover that the road ended before they reached their destination.

As the nation celebrates its 250th birthday, it must also confront a question that has shadowed much of its history: Who gets to belong?

Too often, America has answered that question by welcoming people when their labor is needed most, only to question their place later.

Perhaps that is the greatest irony of all. The people we continue to call temporary have spent years proving their commitment to this country. This ruling is bigger than Haitians or Syrians. It speaks to the covenant a nation makes with the people who answer its call during moments of need.

Though that process has never been smooth, America has always been at its best when it expanded the circle of belonging. Italians, Jews, Asians and even Black Americans born here were all told at one time that they could never fully be American. The country was not diminished by widening the definition of who belongs — it was strengthened by it.

The question is no longer whether Haitians who have their built lives here belong. They have answered that question through years of work, sacrifice and service.

The question is whether America still remembers what it means to be a country that welcomes immigrants.

The U.S. has every right to enforce its immigration laws. But laws do not exist in a vacuum.

The U.S. has every right to enforce its immigration laws. But laws do not exist in a vacuum. They also reflect the promises a nation makes about who belongs. After more than 16 years, the Haitians affected by Thursday’s ruling are no longer strangers passing through. They are co-workers, parishioners, homeowners and taxpayers woven into the fabric of neighborhoods from New York to Florida to Massachusetts.

Pull one thread and you do more than remove one person. You weaken the fabric itself.

Garry Pierre-Pierre

Garry Pierre-Pierre is a Pulitzer-prize winning, multimedia and entrepreneurial journalist. In 1999, he left The New York Times to launch the Haitian Times, a New York-based English-language publication serving the Haitian diaspora. He is also the co-founder of the City University Graduate School of Journalism‘s Center for Community and Ethnic Media and a senior producer at CUNY TV