Trump appears to soften on hard-line stances
WASHINGTON — Presidentelect Donald Trump appeared to soften some of his hardest-line campaign positions on immigration on Sunday, but he also restated his pledge to roll back abortion rights and used Twitter to lash out at his critics, leaving open the possibility that he would continue using social media in the Oval Office and radically change the way presidents speak to Americans.
In his first prime-time television interview since his upset victory, Trump repeated his promise to name a Supreme Court justice who opposes abortion rights and would help overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that recognized them, returning the issue to the states.
Asked where that would leave women seeking abortions, Trump said on the CBS program “60 Minutes,” “Well, they’ll perhaps have to go — they’ll have to go to another state.”
On immigration, he said the wall that he has been promising to build on the nation’s southern border might end up being a fence in places. But he said his priority was to deport 2 million to 3 million immigrants he characterized as dangerous or as having criminal records, a change from his original position that he would deport all of the estimated 11 million unauthorized immigrants in the country. President Barack Obama has deported more than 2 million unauthorized immigrants during his time in office.
Trump said that unauthorized immigrants who are not criminals are “terrific people,” and that he would decide how to handle them after the border is secure.
The House speaker, Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, echoed the president-elect, saying on Sunday that there would be no deportation force, something Trump had promised to create early in his campaign.
Trump also said he considered the Supreme Court decision last year that validated same-sex marriages as settled, and that he was “fine with that.”
He endorsed popular aspects of Barack health insurance law, including a provision that requires coverage of people with pre-existing medical conditions and one that allows young people to remain on their parents’ plans until the age of 26.
But even as he appeared to inch toward the political center, Trump used a series of postings on Twitter to argue that the New York Times’ coverage of him has been “BAD” and “very poor and highly inaccurate.” He falsely stated that the Times had issued an apology to readers, an apparent reference to a letter to readers from its publisher, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., and its executive editor, Dean Baquet. The letter noted the unpredictable nature of the election and said theTimes aimed to “rededicate” itself to “the fundamental mission of Times journalism.”
In the letter, the Times posed a series of what it called inevitable questions, including, “Did Donald Trump’s sheer unconventionality lead us and other news outlets to underestimate his support among American voters?”