House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) was not bothered by comments Donald Trump made in an interview on Sunday saying he does not know if he should uphold the Constitution as president.
Asked by CNN’s Manu Raju if he is “concerned” about the comment, Johnson said Trump is not expected to be an expert.
“Is the President expected to be an expert on all of the Supreme Court cases? I don’t think so.”
“I think he’ll uphold the Constitution, as he’s demonstrated earlier,” Johnson concluded.
In an interview with NBC News’ “Meet the Press” Trump suggested that carrying out mass deportations may take precedence over giving immigrants the right to due process as required by the Constitution.
Asked by moderator Kristen Welker if he agreed with Secretary of State Marco Rubio saying that citizens and noncitizens are entitled to due process, Trump responded, “I don’t know. I’m not a lawyer. I don’t know.”
Welker pointed to the Fifth Amendment, which states in part that “no person” shall be “deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”
Trump suggested that such a process would slow him down.
“I don’t know,” Trump repeated. “It seems it might say that, but if you’re talking about that, then we’d have to have a million or 2 million or 3 million trials.”
“We have thousands of people that are some murders and some drug dealers and some of the worst people on earth, some of the worst most dangerous people on earth, and I was elected to get them the hell out of here and the courts are holding me from doing it,” he said.
