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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   3221 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 9, 2026

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Let's get this thread rolling with something interesting. I happened to come across this clip on Twitter of a post-midterm interview with Trump, posted by America First Post. I'm just gonna transcribe the whole thing here:

Narrator: Whether it was the message, or the record, the Republican collapse will give Democrats in Congress new powers over budgets, hearings, and subpoenas.

Interviewer: You came out after the midterms, you congratulated the Democrats, you said you were open to working with them. What is one thing you would like to work with a Democratic majority on?

Trump: I'd love to do something on immigration.

Interviewer: What? Do you think immigration hurt you in the midterms? Do you think the crackdown hurt you?

Trump: I think it both helped and hurt. I got an A+ for closing up the border. I get very high marks for getting the bad ones out, but I get hurt because we also took people that had good jobs, that created one violation or breaking of the law and that was that they came into the country illegally. Now, there is a large part of the country that think they should be put out and there is a large part of the country that think they should be allowed to stay if they're good people working in a landscaping company or working in a hotel or doing something right? And in some cases paying taxes. And there's a large group of people think that they should be allowed to stay.

Interviewer: So you think your deportation policy went too far? It was too tough.

Trump: I think it was too tough. I think it might be too tough yea.

Interviewer: What would happen? What does the deal look like with the Democrats?

Trump: Well, the deal would be we would work something out and I think it's something, I think that's something that's actually doable.

Interviewer: Doable to create some kind of legal status for the landscapers and the -?

Trump: Yea. When you go into a hotel and you have a woman that's worked there as a, you know, as a maid, as a cleaner, as a this, as a that, as a waitress, a lot of good things, great jobs, and all of a sudden they're being taken out of the country it's tough. It's a tough thing. But there's a group of people that I would say on the sort of pretty far right that would like everybody to connect.

Interviewer: Do any of those people work in your administration? Are they in the building with us right now?

Trump: No, no. Well, there are a lot of those people. Then there's also people that are more modified on that. In other words get the killers out, get all the rough ones out, get the drug dealers out but let the people that are here, and in some cases here for 10 and 15 years, work a deal for them.

Interviewer: Do you think, the Democratic party right now, has people in it that are interested in this kind of deal?

Trump: I think so, yeah. People have already called me.

Interviewer: So I'll say, I saw James Talarico, the new Democratic senator from Texas. I saw him on Fox News and he said immigration was one of the things he wanted to work with the audience.

Trump: Others too, South Carolina said. Numerous people.

Interviewer: You did, in the course of the campaign, you did occasionally call him Talafreako.

Trump: Yea, I did.

Trump is Trump of course so take everything with a massive grain of salt, especially since he announced Stephen Miller would be taking over as his chief of staff, but this is crazy? Perhaps Trump's "Only Nixon can go to China" moment will be an Eisenhower-esque amnesty for illegals. I have heard other commentators suggest that Trump would be open to adding Puerto Rico and D.C. as states from a self-glorifying kind of way. "President Trump, you could be remembered as the first President to add states to the union since 1950! What a legacy!"

As a quick update, Trump just tweeted that there will be no amnesty: https://x.com/WhiteHouse/status/2119912485751017686 Skeptics are quick to point out that acktually letting the illegals stay isn't an amnesty.

I do think that it was always a nothingburger, but also I guess since Trump's team is plugged into twitter, they probably saw half the base chimp over it as well.

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