In his first network television sit-down interview since Election Day, Donald Trump wasted no time previewing the chaos to come during his second term in the White House.
“The extreme positions Donald Trump took on the campaign trail weren’t just campaign rhetoric, and his interview with Kristen Welker revealed he plans to unleash chaos as soon as he is sworn into office,” said American Bridge 21st Century spokesperson Brandon Weathersby. “Trump doubled down on his insane promise to pardon violent insurrectionists, left the door open once again to gutting Social Security and Medicare, and even dove deep into harmful public health conspiracies about childhood vaccinations. Trump’s presidency is already shaping up to be one of the most extreme in modern history with dangerous outcomes for millions of Americans.”
1. Political Retribution
- Donald Trump again defended the violent insurrectionists whom he encouraged to storm the U.S. Capitol and stop the certification of the 2020 election, saying they’ve “suffered long and hard” and that “their lives have been destroyed.”
- Asked specifically about the 169 violent offenders who pled guilty to assaulting police officers, Trump again said he wanted “to look at pardoning” them and the 900 others who pled guilty to other crimes.
- At least seven people died in connection to the January 6th insurrection.
- Trump passed the buck on prosecuting his political rivals to loyalists Kash Patel, his choice to lead the FBI, and Pam Bondi, his replacement for failed attorney general nominee Matt Gaetz, and said he thinks they’ll do what is “right.”
2. Gutting Social Security and Medicare
- On the heels of Trump’s advisor, and co-chair for the fake “department” of government efficiency, Elon Musk endorsing Senator Mike Lee’s social media post calling Social Security a “Ponzi scheme,” Trump acknowledged a desire to change the program to be “more efficient.”
- During his first term in office, Trump proposed cutting Medicare by $500 billion over a decade and proposed billions in cuts to Social Security and disability insurance over the same period.
3. Dangerous Public Health Conspiracies
- Trump went on a conspiratorial rant echoing RFK Jr.’s off-the-wall, unscientific theories that autism is caused by childhood vaccines, telling Kristen Welker, “Well, if you take a look at autism, you go back 25 years, autism was almost non-existent.”
- After Welker explained that there is no scientific link between vaccines and autism and that experts have developed better methods of identifying the medical condition, Trump responded by digging deeper into the conspiracy wormhole, saying: “I don’t know if it’s vaccines. Maybe it’s, maybe it’s chlorine in the water, right? People are looking at a lot of different things.”
Published: Dec 9, 2024 | Last Modified: Dec 30, 2024