Trump emphasized his claim that cities most dramatically impacted by protests, rioters, or looting are those in which Democrats are in power.
“It's all Democrats, usually liberal Democrats. Take a look. Whether it's Chicago, it's Democrat, Seattle, it's Democrat. The state of Washington. It's Democrat. Portland, it's Democrat. All of these places are run by Democrats. Twenty out 20 are Democrat-run,” the president said. “They don’t know what they’re doing. And if Biden got in, this country would be a disaster.”
“Take a look at the way we're running things, we’re running them good. And if I weren't president - talk about the statues - we wouldn't have any statues standing right now. Because I did things that you don't know about to save a lot of them,” the president added.
Arroyo asked Trump about whether presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden is pro-life, noting that some Catholics claim Biden is a pro-life candidate because of his opposition to the death penalty and his efforts to end climate change, while claiming Trump is not.
“I am totally in favor of the death penalty for heinous crimes, ok? That’s the way it is,” the president said.
“I’m pro-life, he’s not. And the Democrats -- look who he’s putting on the court.”
“They want to put people on the court- you have no chance. So I’m pro-life, the Democrats aren’t. Nobody can say that Biden is, look at his stance over the years,” the president added, saying that in his view Democratic party operatives will advance a pro-abortion agenda if Biden is elected to the White House.
“Look at the governor of Virginia, look at what he did. He did an execution after. You know, normally you talk about late-term, his wasn’t late-term, his was, the baby was born, and then you can execute the baby. That’s the Democrats. That’s Joe Biden.”
The president referenced a 2019 Virginia bill supported by Gov. Ralph Northam, which opponents said would permit abortion even while a woman was in active labor.
During dispute over the bill, Northam said on a talk radio show that that if a baby were sufficiently disabled at birth, it could be “kept comfortable” and might be resuscitated if the mother wished, and there could be a “conversation” between doctors and the mother regarding what should be done with the baby.
Trump also talked about a June 18 Supreme Court decision that keeps intact the DACA program, which Trump has made efforts to terminate.
On DACA, Trump said that “What we want to do is win the case and then work it out.”
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“They’re not going to have anything to worry about,” Trump said of DACA recipients, immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children.
While the president has said he is willing to make a deal on immigration reform to preserve the DACA program, some U.S. bishops have said that approach amounts to using DACA recipients as leverage in a political debate.
On June 18, the U.S. bishops’ conference urged President Trump “to strongly reconsider terminating DACA,” citing the plight of immigrant families during the new coronavirus pandemic. To end the program “needlessly places many families into further anxiety and chaos,” they said.
Trump was also asked about allegations by former National Security Advisor John Bolton that the president approved of the construction of internment camps in which up to one million Uighur people have been detained in the Xinjiang region of China.
The allegations are contained in “The Room Where It Happened," a memoir by Bolton to be released June 23.
“The book is a total lie, or mostly a lie,” the president said, noting that in his view Bolton violated the law by including classified information in his book.