The promise every president makes in their oath of office to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States” may not have fully registered in Trump’s mind, despite his having said the oath aloud two times now. In an early May interview with host Kristen Welker of Meet the Press, Trump replied to a question about whether he needs to uphold the Constitution with a verbal shrug — saying “I don’t know.” He also dismissed a question about whether everyone present in the country, including non-citizens, deserves due process: “I don’t know, I’m not a lawyer,” he told Welker.
WELKER: Your secretary of state says everyone who's here, citizens and non-citizens, deserve due process. Do you agree?TRUMP: I don't know. I'm not a lawyer. I don't know.WELKER: Don't you need to uphold the Constitution?TRUMP: I don't know
Trump ranted a day later about the burden of extending due process to people before expelling them to foreign imprisonment — appearing to criticize the constitutional requirement to provide a fair hearing to the people he seeks to remove. “The courts have all of the sudden, out of nowhere, they said, ‘maybe you have to have trials.’ Trials,” he complained to reporters in the Oval Office. “We’re gonna have 5 million trials? It doesn’t work.”
Trump: "The courts have all of the sudden, out of nowhere, they said, 'maybe you have to have trials.' Trials. We're gonna have 5 million trials? It doesn't work."