Ahead of his first presidential campaign rally since March, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Donald Trump sat down for an interview with Fox News Chief White House Correspondent John Roberts.
The US President revealed that the White House would soon be announcing new guest worker visa restrictions, while also weighing in on the protests against racism and police brutality triggered by the death of African-American George Floyd.
Touching upon the growing unemployment figures in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, that brought businesses to a standstill and forced consumer demand to plummet, Trump touted his administration’s efforts to remedy the situation.
"We have plenty of people looking for jobs. It's going rapidly… You know, we set a record last month in the history of our country. We did a better job than they've ever done on jobs. The country's coming back. It's coming back very, very fast,” said Trump.
At this point the president hinted as a forthcoming announcement on visas, saying:
"…I think it's going to make a lot of people happy. And it's common sense, to be honest with you."
When asked to elaborate, Trump reiterated the new measures would be applauded by many Americans.
"No preview, other than, people are going to be happy," he replied. "[With unemployment], we were at less than 3.5 percent. All of a sudden we had to close the country. By the way, if we didn't do that, we would have had - I would probably say four million deaths."
While Trump has already barred many foreign workers during the coronavirus pandemic, immigration hardliners having been reportedly pressuring him to go further, broadening the 22 April executive order he signed, that barred several categories of green card applicants from entering the country for a period of 60 days. The order is subsequently to be reevaluated and potentially extended.
The ban excludes those who are in the country seeking to change their immigration status, and does not apply to seasonal farm workers on seasonal guest worker visas.
Trump signed off on the order, citing “the impact of foreign workers on the United States labor market, particularly in an environment of high domestic unemployment and depressed demand for labor”.
The cited reasons for the move were pressures on health care and other factors.
Trump also doubled down on his earlier vow to rescind the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which granted legal protection to immigrants brought into the country illegally as children, thus shielding some 650,000 young people known as “Dreamers."
However, on 18 June the Supreme Court ruled that the Trump Administration’s efforts to dismantle the DACA program was unconstitutional.
Nonetheless, Trump reiterated:
"We're going to refile… And I hope we can go directly to the Supreme Court. Maybe we can't. But if you read the opinion, we won. But we have to refile and everything is going to work out for DACA… We're going to refile and probably pretty soon. Because basically, we won."
The president also added this would happen before November's election.
Elsewhere in the interview, touting his supporters ahead of the rally, Trump addressed protests against racism and police brutality that have taken place following the death of African American man George Floyd, and the drive to target controversial monuments.
"That’s why I’m here, people want to do it. We had a lot of protesters that were nasty outside. I think the police did a very good job, but we had a lot of nasty protesters throwing things and screaming. They're disgraceful. They're a disgrace to our country," he said.
