Trump Backtracks on Dana White, Calls Mass Deportations “Too Hard”

US President Donald Trump has described his offer of the vacant position of spokesman in the White House to his friend Dana White, the boss of brutal cage fighting, as a joke. “I was just joking,” Trump said, “but Dana loves the idea.”

A day earlier, Trump wrote on his online service Truth Social that he had offered White the position: “Dana, please accept the job!” Trump wrote there. After a boxing event in London, White announced that he wanted to talk to the President about it on Monday. But now he also knows: it was all just a joke. The White House has been without a spokesperson since October 16, after Katie Zacharia was forced to leave her post after less than a week in office.

Not funny at all, but Trump's change of heart on migration is all the more astonishing. After his Republicans' heavy election defeat, the US President described his government's mass deportations as "too harsh."

“Many in the United States believed that people who were in the country illegally should not be deported, for example if they work in a garden center or a hotel,” Trump said in an interview on the TV show “60 Minutes.” He believes that an agreement could be worked out with the Democrats for such situations. Democrats will control both chambers of Congress starting in January.

In his second term, Trump initially relied heavily on raids by officials from the sometimes martial immigration agency ICE, combined with mass deportations. The tough course against migrants without valid residence permits led to protests in several major cities. Two US citizens were also killed in connection with ICE activities. The government then scaled back operations somewhat.

The strange thing: After the Republicans' defeat in the congressional election, Trump appointed right-wing hardliner Stephen Miller as his new chief of staff. Miller is considered the central architect of deportation policy.

In the TV interview, Trump named immigration as one of the issues on which he wanted to work with the Democratic Party. When asked whether it would be possible to avoid offending the Democrats for six months, Trump said: "Easily." During the congressional election campaign, he called them, among other things, “dummocrats,” based on the word “dumb.”

And the US President also came up with something appropriate for the scandal surrounding Nvidia boss Jensen Huang. He described Huang as a “good person” and said he should remain at the helm of Nvidia. The CEO had confessed to an affair with a young Chinese woman who US intelligence officials suspected was a Chinese spy.

“I haven’t spoken to him about it,” Trump told reporters on Sunday before returning to Washington. “All I know is that he’s a good person, but you never know what’s going on.” Asked whether Huang should remain in office, Trump replied: "I think so. Oh yeah, sure."

dpa/fro