Jon McHenry joined NPR’s All Things Considered to discuss President Trump’s approach to the courts:
ORDOÑEZ: The White House says it’s going to obey court orders, and they’re confident they’re ultimately going to win the court cases, and there are a lot of them. Trump has also attacked a judiciary for hampering his efforts to cut the federal workforce. This weekend, Trump’s defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, criticized a judge who blocked an executive order banning transgender people from serving in the military. Jon McHenry, a Republican pollster with North Star Opinion Research, says it makes sense that Trump and his team are picking these specific issues to go public.
JON MCHENRY: So when you’re picking the fight, you’re essentially fighting from your safest ground.
ORDOÑEZ: McHenry says reasonable people may disagree about immigration and who should be allowed to remain in the country. But Trump is making this about deporting criminals.
MCHENRY: It’s harder for the other side to argue it on the point of, no, you shouldn’t be deporting gang members. Well, 80% of Americans probably do think you should be deporting gang members as quickly as possible, and they don’t really care about any constitutional rights or separation of powers between, you know, the presidency and the judicial.
To read the full transcript, please click here, or to hear the audio, click here.
