Time Journalist Shares What 'Struck' Him About Trump After Stunning Interview
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Time magazine on Tuesday published a bombshell interview with former President Donald Trump, the presumptive 2024 Republican nominee, titled “If He Wins.”
Massimo Calabresi, Time’s Washington bureau chief, appeared on CNN Tuesday to discuss the article, written by national politics reporter Eric Cortellessa.
The piece begins with the sentence: “Donald Trump thinks he’s identified a crucial mistake of his first term: He was too nice.”
“It sets the tone for the whole piece,” Calabresi told CNN’s Jake Tapper. “Which is: This is the same Donald Trump we’re all very familiar with.”
“But he struck Eric Cortellessa, our reporter, and all of us involved in the piece, as more confident,” he continued. “That confidence, I think, comes from his own experience, but also from having a real plan for what he would do if he got in office. And it is, in some ways, designed to be tougher than last time.”
Trump was interviewed twice in April for the article, once for over an hour at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, and a second time for 20 minutes over the phone on Saturday.
Time published a transcript of the interview in addition to its article.
It included some of Trump’s most in-depth comments yet about his aggressive plans for a possible second term.
Among the most shocking: He suggested he could use the military to carry out mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, and that states with abortion bans could monitor pregnant women to ensure they don’t terminate their pregnancies.
He also suggested there wouldn’t be political violence in the November election if he wins ― but that “if we don’t win, you know, it depends,” he said.
Asked if he would consider pardoning every single person sentenced over their roles in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, Trump said he “absolutely” would. He also said he would consider firing a U.S. attorney who didn’t prosecute someone he ordered them to.
Watch Calabresi’s CNN appearance below.
