Donald Trump grappled with a wide range of contentious issues in an interview with NBC that generated criticism against the network, including his thoughts on democratic principles, abortion rights and ageing politicians.
He also confirmed his interest in choosing Kristi Noem to be his vice-presidential running mate if he wins the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 as he seeks a second term in the White House.
In an interview on Sunday with Kristen Welker during her debut as host of NBC’s Meet the Press, the former president advised members of his party to abandon their hardline stance of abortion bans with no exceptions.
He said Republicans “speak very inarticulately” about abortion and criticized those who push for abortion bans without exceptions in the cases of rape, incest and the health of the mother.
“Other than certain parts of the country, you can’t – you’re not going to win on this issue,” said Trump, who faces more than 90 pending criminal charges across four separate indictments, including for subversion of the 2020 election which he lost to Joe Biden.
“But you will win on this issue when you come up with the right number of weeks.”
Trump predicted that both sides would eventually come together on the issue after the US supreme court last year eliminated the federal abortion rights that had been put in place decades earlier by the Roe v Wade ruling. Three justices whom he appointed to the supreme court made the elimination of those rights a reality.
“For the first time in … years, you’ll have an issue that we can put behind us,” he said.
Trump said he is “all for” a presidency competency test, but the 77-year-old expressed his opposition to age limits.
He alluded to taking a mental competency test two or three years ago and boasted that he “aced it”.
“I get everything right,” Trump said during the interview conducted at his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf retreat. “I’m all for testing. I frankly think testing would be a good thing.”
In 2020, it was revealed that some of the early questions in that test involved Trump identifying an elephant and counting backward from 100.
Asked if it is time for a new generation of US leadership, Trump said: “It’s always time for a new generation.” But he qualified his answer: “Some of the greatest world leaders have been in their 80s.”
Those remarks from Trump came after retiring Republican US senator Mitt Romney of Utah called for a “new generation of leaders”.
Trump notably defended Biden, his Democratic rival, on his age. A poll last month from the Associated Press and the Norc Center for Public Affairs showed 77% of Americans – including 69% of Democrats – think the 80-year-old Biden is too old to serve a second term.
“I don’t think Biden’s too old,” Trump said to Welker. “But I think he’s incompetent, and that’s a bigger problem. It’s really a level of competency, not the age.”
Two days before Trump attacked Biden’s acuity, Trump told a summit in Washington that a “cognitively impaired” Biden would lead the US into “world war two”, which already occurred between 1939 and 1945.
Meanwhile, Trump said he “liked the concept” of having a woman as his running mate if he wins the Republican nomination, adding that he had his eye on Noem, the South Dakota governor. “I think she’s fantastic,” he said. “She’s been a great governor. She gave me a very full-throated endorsement, a beautiful endorsement actually. Certainly she’d be one of the people I’d consider.”
Noem recently confirmed that she was a candidate for the position. “Of course, I would consider it,” she told Fox News. But that was before the governor was splashed across the tabloid press for allegedly having an affair with former Trump aide Corey Lewandowski since at least 2019.
The Daily Mail’s reporting has not been denied, though Noem’s spokesperson said it was “so predictable” that the South Dakota governor would be attacked soon after she endorsed Trump for the Republican nomination.
Trump was asked if he still believes democracy is the most effective form of government. “I do – but it has to be a democracy that’s fair,” he said. “This democracy – I don’t consider us to have much of a democracy right now.”
He went on to complain about the indictments against him, which also contain charges for allegedly mishandling classified documents and attempting to conceal hush money payments to adult film actor Stormy Daniels.
Those charges are separate from civil cases that include a $250m lawsuit by the New York attorney general about his business affairs as well as a defamation claim stemming from a rape accusation that a judge has deemed to be “substantially true”.
During the interview, Trump said he was not “consumed” with the prospect of prison time.
“I don’t even think about it,” Trump said. “I’m built a little differently I guess, because I have had people come up to me and say, ‘How do you do it, sir? How do you do it?’ I don’t even think about it.
“I truly feel that, in the end, we’re going to win.”
Trump has maintained he would not pardon himself if he is re-elected, but he revealed to Welker that he had discussed pardoning himself in the dying days of his presidency – a sign that he and his legal team understood the legal peril he brought on to himself by challenging the election’s results.
He said his failed election challenges eventually prompted him to ignore advice from his attorneys “because I didn’t respect them”.
Sunday’s interview earned NBC criticism from many commentators who questioned the wisdom of giving such a soapbox to Trump after his alleged criminal misdeeds from before, during and after his presidency.
One question by Welker that some dismissed as a soft ball sought to discuss the contents of a message that Trump left for Biden when he left the White House.
Earlier this year, CNN was pilloried for giving Trump a town hall-style platform in New Hampshire that indirectly led to the dismissal of its programming architect, former morning TV producer and CNN chief Chris Licht.
NBC has said the network has also invited Biden to sit down for an interview with Welker.
