Opinion: Trump’s “Too Tough” Admission Only Matters If the Policy Changes
This is an opinion and analysis piece. It is based on the verified interview reported below; the judgements about what the admission means are the author’s.
In his first major interview since the midterm elections, President Donald Trump said something he has rarely said about his own policies: that they went too far. The interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes”, recorded on November 6 and broadcast on November 8, was conducted by correspondent Ross Douthat. Asked whether his deportation policy had gone too far, Trump replied: “I think it might be too tough, yeah.”
He went further. “It was too tough. I think it might be too tough,” he said, adding: “I think, ultimately, that hurt me.” He was speaking days after Democrats won control of both chambers of Congress in the November 3 midterms. On immigration, he singled out people who have lived in the United States for ten years or more without committing serious crimes, and workers in landscaping and hotel jobs who have been in the country for years.
He also opened the door, at least rhetorically, to a deal. “The deal would be we would work something out. And I think it’s something — I think that’s something that’s actually doable,” he said. He described hotel workers — maids, cleaners and waitresses — being “taken out of the country” as “a tough thing.”
An admission with no policy attached
That is a striking acknowledgement from a president who made mass deportation central to all three of his presidential campaigns. It is also, so far, only words. Trump did not announce a change in policy, give details of a proposed agreement, or set out a timeline. According to CBS News, Homeland Security and ICE had received no instructions to reduce enforcement after the elections.
Trump also drew a line he has drawn before. He said he deserved an “A+” for closing the border and high marks for removing people with criminal records. The admission, in other words, was narrow: not that enforcement itself was wrong, but that it had swept up too many people without criminal records who had built lives and jobs in the United States. That distinction matters, because it leaves the core of the policy intact while conceding its edges.
Related Articles
The appointment that contradicts the message
The strongest reason to doubt that a course correction is coming arrived on the same day the interview was recorded. On November 6, Trump elevated Stephen Miller, the architect of his hardline immigration agenda, to chief of staff. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer put the contradiction bluntly on social media after the interview aired: “Trump says his immigration crackdown went too far. Apparently, his solution was to put the man responsible for it in charge of the White House. That’s not a course correction. That’s a promotion.”
Schumer is a partisan critic, and his remark should be read as such. But the underlying fact is not in dispute: a president who intends to negotiate a deal protecting long-term residents does not usually put the policy’s chief designer in charge of the White House on the same day he floats the idea.
None of that has happened yet. Until it does, the honest description of Trump’s “60 Minutes” appearance is that a president who lost an election acknowledged a political cost, floated a deal, and then appointed the man least likely to deliver one. That may still become a turning point. But a turning point is proved by what follows it, not by the words spoken at the time.
