Five most shocking moments to come out of Trump's interview with NBC News | indy100

Trump won’t rule out illegal third term as president in NBC interview

NBC

US president Donald Trump gave an exclusive interview to NBC News in the Oval Office, and the conversation was as varied and as wild as you might imagine.

With ICE agents killing US citizens in the street and more Epstein files details emerging, the Trump administration is coming under ever greater scrutiny.

In an interview with NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Llamas, Trump covered topics ranging from immigration and voting, to ICE and Minneapolis.

And, in classic Trump style, he managed to spark controversy with some of his remarks. Here are some of the most telling moments:

ICE shooting of Renee Good and Alex Pretti

When asked specifically about the shooting of two American citizens on the streets of Minneapolis by ICE, Trump said neither of the victims were “angels”.

“He (Pretti) was not an angel, and she (Good) was not an angel … But still, I’m not happy with what happened there. Nobody can be happy, and ICE wasn’t happy either.

“But I’m going to always be with our great people of law enforcement – ICE, police – we have to back them.”

Elsewhere, Trump decried the bad publicity ICE was getting and appeared to make an attempt to direct attention towards the US military’s airstrikes on alleged drug traffickers in the Caribbean Sea.

“It’s bad. I hate it. I hate even talking about it. Two people out of tens of thousands and you get bad publicity.”

When reporter Llamas attempted to highlight the significance of the fact that two US citizens were killed, Trump’s nonsensical reply was: “They don’t talk about, we have the smallest trucks. As an example, we’ve been very tough on the waters.”

Bill Clinton testifying in House Epstein investigation

Amid news that former president Clinton has agreed to testify, alongside his wife Hillary, in the House Oversight Committee’s Jeffrey Epstein investigation, Trump has some surprisingly nice things to say about him.

“It bothers me that somebody is going after Bill Clinton. See, I liked Bill Clinton. I still like Bill Clinton … I liked his behaviour toward me. I thought he got me, he understood me.”

Upcoming midterm elections

In another portion of the interview, Trump was asked about the upcoming midterm elections – votes that are held close to the midpoint of a president’s four-year tenure. They will take place this year on Tuesday, 3 November.

Amid Trump’s repeated false claim that the 2020 election was “stolen” from him, the reporter asked Trump if he would accept the result of the midterm vote.

His answer was concerning.

“I will, if the elections are honest. Look … I just had a great election. They say one of the greatest elections, you will agree, ever,” Trump claimed.

Amongst this praise for himself, he continued: “I believe there was cheating, I think it was cheating in Detroit.”

Someone responded: “This is Trump’s way of saying that he will only accept the results of the election if the GOP wins. We’ve seen this before.”

Staying on as president past his second term

In what would be an illegal third term, Trump did not dismiss the idea of serving for a third term as president of the US.

When asked if he saw staying on past his current term as a potential scenario, Trump gave a cryptic and concerning answer.

“I don’t know, it would be interesting,” Trump said. “But wouldn’t it be terrible if I agreed with you, if I gave you the answer that you’re looking for? It would make life so much less exciting, right. It would be so much less exciting.”

Bad polling on the economy

One of the most telling parts of the interview came when Trump claimed he is “starting to get great polls on the economy”.

Very quickly, he was informed by Llamas that that is not the case, saying: “The polls on the economy, they’re not great.”

Trump responded, saying, “They should be great,” and added, “I don’t know” when asked why they are not.

Ignoring the reporter’s question on when Americans are going to start feeling the alleged improvements in the economy, Trump then went on a rant about how he believes the country would have been “finished” had the Democrats won the 2024 presidential election.

Why not read…

Sign up to our free indy100 weekly newsletter

Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.