President-elect Donald Trump’s first interview after winning the US presidential election is interesting. Well, we mean, of course it bloody is, but the 60 Minutes segment answered the question many hopeful punters on both sides of the political divide have asked since his win: will the checks and balances of the presidency actually tame Donald Trump and his wilder policy positions?
The answer is maybe, but look, probably not. And when things do go his way, you can expect massive changes in policy.
Flanked by his fam at his penthouse in
Manhattan’s Trump Tower, the man who’ll become the 45th
President of the United States of America walked back a number of the more ostentatious proposals he made during his unprecedented campaign, but doubled down on more.
Lesley Stahl asked Trump why his “transition team” was packed full of his cronies with lobbying and finance backgrounds, despite his repeated claims he wanted to “drain” Washington D.C.’s political “swamp” of special interest groups.
Trump reply was essentially a hand-waving “so what.” He said “that’s the only people you have down there… that’s the problem with the system, the system. Right now, we’re going to clean it up.” His claim that “we’re going to phase that out. You have to phase it out” is questionable, considering the immense power and influence he’ll be handing ’em.
When asked about locking up former opponent Hillary Clinton over that godforsaken email scandal, Trump again changed his stance. Seemingly muting the chants of “lock her up” that emanated from his rallies, Trump insisted he’s going to “think about it,” but “I want to focus on all of these other things that we’ve been talking about.”
Reminder: here’s what some of his rallies sounded like.
His personal view of “Crooked Hillary” and the Clinton clan seems to have shifted, too. He told Stahl “I don’t want to hurt them. I don’t want to hurt them. They’re, they’re good people. I don’t want to hurt them. And I will give you a very, very good and definitive answer the next time we do 60 Minutes together.”
Much has been written about
how boggling America’s Electoral College system is – after all, Clinton is on track to actually walk away with over 2 million more popular votes than Trump – and Trump has railed against the
“rigged” system in the past. Now the Electoral College has enabled his big fat W, Trump’s seems a
little more genial towards what many claim is a clunky anachronism.
“Well, you know, I’m not going to change my mind just because I won. But I would rather see it where you went with simple votes… But this is a different system. But I respect it. I do respect the system.”
While he didn’t rebuke the Ku Klux Klan for endorsing his presidency, Trump did call for anyone committing acts of racially-motivated violence after his victory to “stop it.”
“I would say ‘don’t do it, that’s terrible,’ ‘cause I’m gonna bring this country together.”
Bit late there Donny, but okay. Another aspect that we’re going to chalk up as a victory for basic human equality: he said he won’t challenge the legitimacy of same-sex marriage. That’s all well and good, but when your VP is conversion therapy advocate Mike Pence, anything is possible.
Those softened stances come after it was
revealed his proposed “wall” on the US-
Mexican border will likely be a fence in many places, and that his views of
Barack Obama are undergoing a complete turnaround after, you know,
meeting the bloke he’s been disparaging for years.
However, there were a couple of affirmations of policy sprinkled in there, too. Regarding ISIS – yup, while we were wrapped in in existential terror regarding Trump, those assholes didn’t exactly put down their arms – he maintained that he may still know more than US generals about defeating the radical group. He also kept mum about how exactly he plans to do it, but you can bet it’ll involve ol’ mate Vladimir Putin.
Perhaps his strongest re-affirmation of policy came when he discussed the rights of women to receive abortions. Trump said he’s “pro-life” and vowed to call up a Supreme Court judge who’ll work to overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade decision, which currently enshrines the right for women to receive an abortion in federal law.
Although Trump said that move “has a long, long way to go,” he intimated that regulations regarding abortion may revert to the states, and that women may eventually have to travel to undergo the procedure.
After all that, we have a glimpse of the president Trump could be – opinionated, sure, but in dire need of direction from his confidantes and party to function in any meaningful way. Still, when the wishes of his political minders align with the will of Trump, shit’s going to change, big league. And, in some ways, we guess that was the entire point of Trump’s campaign.
Photo: 60 Minutes / Facebook.
