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Salon
Salon
Politics
Alex Galbraith

Trump balks at following Constitution

President Donald Trump seems to have forgotten the oath he swore twice. 

In an interview with "Meet the Press," Trump repeatedly punted on whether or not he's bound to follow the Constitution. Kristen Welker asked if Trump believed citizens and non-citizens in the United States are entitled to due process

"I'm not a lawyer," Trump responded. "I don't know."

When pressed for an answer, Trump fell back on his recent defense that holding trials for all the people his administration is deporting for supposed criminal associations would be too time-consuming.

"We’d have to have a million or 2 million or 3 million trials. We have thousands of people that are... some of the worst people on Earth. Some of the worst, most dangerous people on Earth," he said. "I was elected to get them the hell out of here, and the courts are holding me from doing it."

Welker went for a more direct route, asking Trump bluntly if he felt the need to "uphold the Constitution."

"I don’t know. I have to respond by saying, again, I have brilliant lawyers that work for me, and they are going to obviously follow what the Supreme Court said," he responded.

Elsewhere in the interview, Trump mulled the idea of using military force to take Greenland. The president has pushed for the annexation of Greenland and turning some or all of Canada into the "51st state." 

When Welker asked about an invasion of Canada, Trump said it would not he "get to that point" with our neighbor to the north.

"Something could happen with Greenland. I’ll be honest, we need that for national and international security," he said, before calling a war with Canada "highly unlikely."

"I don’t see it with Canada," he said. "I just don’t see it, I have to be honest with you."

Watch the interview below:

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