Trump Calls His Immigration Policy 'Too Tough' After Midterm Defeat, Vows to Work With Democrats

President Donald Trump told CBS' 60 Minutes that his immigration policy was probably too harsh, in an interview recorded on Friday and broadcast Sunday evening, days after his party lost both chambers of Congress. "I think it was too tough. I think it might be too tough," he said when asked about his administration's deportation push.

Democrats took the House of Representatives and the Senate in the November 3 midterm elections, flipping a number of Republican-held seats in what the report describes as a sweeping setback for the president. The results were read as a reflection of voter dissatisfaction over his handling of immigration, the economy, the Iran war and rising living costs. Trump also said he was ready to work with the Democratic Party in the years ahead.

Asked why Republicans fared so badly, Trump pointed to the war and fuel prices, the same explanation many commentators have offered. "They didn't like the war," he said. "They didn't like the fact that gasoline went up because I had it down at a low. And there's a great dislike, incredibly, for Israel." He named hostility toward Israel as a factor as well.

On immigration, he described the effect at the polls as mixed, saying the crackdown had both helped and hurt him. He said he believed he earned an A+ for closing the border and very high marks for removing what he called the bad ones. The damage, he said, came from deporting people who held good jobs and whose only violation was entering the country illegally. He said part of the country thinks such people should be removed, while another large part thinks they should stay if they are good people working at a landscaping company or a hotel, in some cases paying taxes. He then repeated that the policy was too tough.

The human cost of the policy is part of this story. Indian tech workers were among those hit hardest by the administration's hard-line approach, and Trump's own remarks acknowledged that people with jobs were swept up.

Whether the admission will change anything is unclear. Soon after the interview was recorded, Trump named Stephen Miller, known for his strong anti-immigration views, as his Chief of Staff. That appointment has raised questions about whether the president will meaningfully soften his approach.

The interview also ranged beyond immigration. Trump repeated his claim that he prevented a nuclear war between India and Pakistan, saying he had settled eight wars. He said that in the India-Pakistan conflict, 11 planes had been shot down and both sides were ready to escalate, and that Pakistan's prime minister told him he had saved 30 to 50 million lives. The conflict followed the April 22 terror attack in Pahalgam, which killed 26 people, and India's launch of Operation Sindoor on May 7, 2025, against terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

New Delhi has consistently rejected the claim of US mediation. It says the understanding to halt military action was reached directly between the two countries' Directors General of Military Operations on May 10, 2025, and that no trade-related discussions with the US took place during the conflict.

Asked what he thought would happen after his death, Trump said, "I hope I'm missed." He called himself a religious person and said he hoped to go to heaven. The thing to watch now is whether his words on immigration are matched by any change in policy under Miller, and how he deals with a Democratic Congress.