“I think it was too tough.” Trump to 60 Minutes, Nov. 8, 2026, about his deportation policy
Donald Trump told 60 Minutes on Sunday that his deportation policy was “too tough,” and the same program has his answer from last year on tape. Both interviews are on the record, so here they are side by side.
| Aired | The question | Trump’s answer |
|---|---|---|
| Nov. 2, 2025 | Norah O’Donnell: “Have some of these raids gone too far?” | “No. I think they haven’t gone far enough” |
| Nov. 8, 2026 | Ross Douthat, on which immigration policies hurt him | “I think it was too tough” |
The gap between the broadcasts is 371 days, and the November 2025 answer blamed judges for holding ICE back. This time his complaint is narrower than a retreat. He told Douthat he gets “very high marks for getting the bad ones out,” that he hurt himself by also taking “people that had good jobs,” and that he earned “an A+ for closing up the border”. He is not disowning the machine. He is disowning the collateral.
The voters have already ruled on the collateral: 58 percent of midterm voters said his immigration actions have gone too far. The machine’s target is the other number. CBS reports Trump pressed ICE last year for at least 3,000 arrests a day, a figure Stephen Miller had floated on Fox, and ICE’s own data in October 2025 showed an average of about 900 a day, roughly 30 percent of the target by our arithmetic. We could not find a comparable figure for the months since, which is the number worth demanding.
In the days before the broadcast, Trump named Miller his chief of staff. We think that is the real answer to the interview. A president who says a policy was too tough on Sunday, and who promotes the man who floated its quota the same week, has not changed the policy. He has changed the quote. Judge it by the arrest numbers, because the transcript costs him nothing.