WASHINGTON DC: US President Donald Trump said in remarks airing Sunday (May 4) that he does not know whether he must uphold the US Constitution, the nation’s founding legal document.
In a wide-ranging NBC News interview, the 78-year-old Republican also said he was not seriously considering running for a constitutionally-barred third White House term, and blamed his presidential predecessor Joe Biden for the “bad parts” of the current economy.
Trump has drawn widespread criticism for repeatedly brushing up against constitutional guardrails since returning to the White House in January, notably over his policy of mass deportations of undocumented migrants, some without the benefit of a court hearing.
He insists such rapid expulsions are necessary in the face of what he has declared to be a “national emergency,” and that giving every migrant a court trial would take “300 years.”
When NBC’s “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker asked if people in the United States, citizens and non-citizens alike, deserve the due process of law, as the US Constitution states, Trump said: “I’m not a lawyer. I don’t know.”
Pressed more generally on whether he believes he needs to uphold the supreme law of the land, Trump repeated: “I don’t know.”
The remarks in the interview, recorded Friday and broadcast Sunday, quickly made waves in Washington, including among some Republicans.
“We’re either a free society governed by the Constitution or we’re not,” Republican Senator Rand Paul, a self-described constitutional conservative, posted on X without additional comment.
