Let’s pretend, for a moment, that you are the president, and voters just responded to your governance by dealing out a historic midterm rebuke to your party. You’re probably looking to do some damage control. Some cabinet heads might roll, members of
party leadership might slink into retirement, you might — should the situation prove dire enough — give an exclusive interview to a prestige news show in order to put a positive spin on the brutal week.
Trump attempted such a reframing on Sunday night, when he appeared on 60 Minutes — recently placed under more conservative-friendly management — in part to answer for Republicans’ midterm losses. Several moments stood out. The president defended his continued profiteering off his family’s companies, claimed “everyone” had increased their net worth by $3 billion (not just himself), and blamed the unpopularity of the Iran war on “bad messaging.”
Most surprisingly — particularly to some Republicans — the president conceded on camera that his immigration policies were “too tough.”
“What is one thing you would like to work with a Democratic majority on?” host Ross Douthat asked the president, who responded that he would “love to do something on immigration.”
It was a bit of a curveball considering the gusto with which the administration has pursued a merciless, openly cruel crackdown on immigration since Trump returned to office, one that explicitly targets migrants of color and minority communities. When pressed on whether he thought his immigration policies had helped or hurt him with voters, Trump tried to have it both ways. He claimed he “got an A+” for closing the southern border, but had been punished because the crackdown had detained and deported “people that had good jobs,” whose only unlawful conduct had been to be undocumented.
“I think it might be too tough,” Trump said of his administration’s deportation policies. “A lotta people would say that it’s great. But a lotta people think it’s too tough.”
Now, before anyone starts thinking that this interview might be the start of a radical moral transformation of the president and his administration, Trump has made plenty of contradictory statements about immigration in the past. In the summer of 2025, he floated exemptions for undocumented service and agricultural workers after the industries pleaded with the White House. The administration nevertheless continued its deportation crackdown.
On Friday, in his first major post-midterm action. Trump appointed Stephen Miller, the architect of the immigration crackdown and a committed white nationalist, as his chief of staff. The promotion would grant Miller, who already holds a sizable amount of power within the administration, even more influence on executive policy and decisionmaking — especially as President Trump seems increasingly focused on his home renovations and construction projects over the demands of heading the U.S. government.
Some Republicans and right-wing influencers — themselves avowed ultranationalists — responded to the president’s interview with confusion, and in some cases anger.
“I’m kind of confused because I voted for no endless wars and mass deportations but feels like I’m getting endless wars and amnesty… I hope I’m wrong,” influencer Tomi Lahren wrote on X. “This notion that because an illegal has evaded the law for 15 years they get some kind of a pass or a gold star is utterly ridiculous,” she added in another post.
Matt Walsh, of The Daily Wire, wrote that “the policy was not too tough. There need to be more deportations, not fewer. The mistake was staging deportation theater with Kristi Noem out on ICE raids dressed like Tomb Raider. Don’t call so much attention to it. Don’t have government accounts on X posting spicy memes about it. Just go do it, efficiently and professionally.”
Adam Christian Johnson, also known as the Jan. 6 “lectern guy,” wrote on social media that he would not “keep quiet so I can go on a handful of podcasts or to some events.”
“I’m out. This betrayal was too much.”
And while the president may have a committed group of supporters who continue to see him and his movement as the best vehicle to implement that transformative right-wing social and political agenda they wish to inflict on the nation, it’s clear that the rest of the nation has had enough.
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