Transcript: Trump’s Threats to Jail Foes Just Got Darker and Scarier

The following is a lightly edited transcript of the July 3 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.

Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.

This week, President Donald Trump has spent a lot of time issuing angry threats against Zohran Mamdani, who recently pulled off a shocking underdog victory in New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary. Trump has been attacking Mamdani as a “Communist” and questioning his U.S. citizenship, which hints at a coming effort to try to strip that citizenship from him. What really caught our eye, though, is Mamdani’s response to Trump. It was very sharply worded and quickly laid out the real stakes of this battle. This is something we think Democrats can learn from because it’s becoming clear that Trump’s threats to denaturalize political opponents may be on the way to becoming a real thing. So can Trump denaturalize Mamdani and other political opponents? What would that look like? And what should liberals and Democrats be preparing for right now? Today we’re trying to figure all this out with one of our favorite immigration analysts, David Bier of the Cato Institute. Good to finally have you on, David.

David Bier: Thanks for having me on. It’s great to finally make it here.

Sargent: So let’s start with Trump’s deranged threats. This week Trump was asked about Mamdani’s claims that he will resist ICE arrests in New York City. Trump responded by saying, Well, we’re going to have to arrest him. Listen to this.

Donald Trump (audio voiceover): Well then we’ll have to arrest him. Look, we don’t need a communist in this country, but if we have one, I’m going to be watching over him very carefully on behalf of the nation. A lot of people saying he’s here illegally. We’re going to look at everything.

Sargent: So there’s that. And then Trump also tweeted this, “I’m not going to let this Communist Lunatic destroy New York.... I hold all the levers.” David, if you take this along with Trump’s suggestion that Mamdani is here illegally, you have to take seriously the possibility that Trump may move to denationalize Mamdani. Your thoughts on this?

Bier: The reason why the president is so anti-immigrant, anti–legal immigration [is] because he sees them as a threat to his power. He sees them as political opponents, as future members of the Democratic Party. And so when he looks at them, he thinks, Threat, and I’m going to crack down. I’m going to find a way to get them out of this country. And it doesn’t matter if they’ve committed any crimes, if they’ve done anything in violation of the law, he’s still going to target them. And that’s what we’ve already seen with respect to his agenda with legal immigrants in the United States who are here as noncitizens. Now he’s just expanding those assaults to people who are citizens, who have naturalized. And if you look at what he’s done with legal immigrants already, he’s arresting people who are here legally for their speech and their advocacy, including someone who wrote an op-ed in a student newspaper. So this is what he sees as his power, and he’s willing to use it even against U.S. citizens who express dissent and oppose his agenda.

Sargent: So Mamdani responded to all this with a terrific statement. I want to read part of it. Here goes, “The President of the United States just threatened to have me arrested, stripped of my citizenship, put in a detention camp and deported. Not because I have broken any law but because I will refuse to let ICE terrorize our city. His statements don’t just represent an attack on our democracy but an attempt to send a message to every New Yorker who refuses to hide in the shadows: if you speak up, they will come for you. We will not accept this intimidation.” David, this doesn’t back down in the slightest. It reframes the issue as being about Trump’s abuses of power, and it speaks to New Yorkers. It says, We won’t let him do this to us. And us is immigrants and their allies. It’s a very solidaristic message. It’s basically, If you’re threatening immigrants, you’re threatening all of us. How often do you hear Democrats talk that way?

Bier: Yeah, unfortunately, not as much as I would like to see. Look, I’ve been saying for a long time this issue of free speech, of using immigration as a way to enhance his power is central to his agenda. He wants to limit the people who have rights in the U.S. to as small a circle as possible. With immigration, it’s easier than in some other areas. But with immigration, [he’s] trying to restrict the rights of immigrants and their families to just barely a thread, right? If he can cut it at any time, he will. And that’s why the birthright citizenship case is also relevant here because, again, that’s about taking away citizenship from people who otherwise could assert their rights against the government. And once you get rid of birthright citizenship, that’s another lever that you can press on even for people who were born here.

Sargent: Let’s talk about this mechanism of denaturalization for a second. The federal government can denaturalize U.S. citizens under certain circumstances. Can you walk us through how all that works? And is it relevant that Trump keeps calling Mamdani a communist?

Bier: Yes and no. It’s not relevant in the sense that he should prevail in any attempt to denaturalize him. But unfortunately, it’s not the situation where you’re just going to get laughed out of court [or] this is not something that you should be concerned with at all because the requirements to naturalize include some very vague language that President Trump is undoubtedly going to latch his attack on these political opponents under. The main one we’re talking about here is the requirement that you demonstrate that you’re attached to the principles of the Constitution and well-disposed to the good order and happiness of the U.S. And there’s also a provision for revocation that interprets that language as having membership in the Communist Party or another totalitarian party that is opposed to the principles of the U.S. And so this is where you get that hook of, He’s a communist, he’s not attached to the principles of the Constitution, and he’s opposed to the happiness of the U.S.

So he can use this vague language. Now, courts have always interpreted this very narrowly. They haven’t been willing to allow the president to just go out and revoke people’s citizenship for things that they said and for free speech. Or even in some cases, they actually had members of the Communist Party who they would try to denaturalize and they were able to win their cases by arguing that they were still attached to the principles of the Constitution. But the point is the threat is real. This is actually something that he could try to do. A court would actually hear the case. And we don’t know. The courts haven’t really considered this in a serious way in many years, so the opportunity here to set new precedent, push the envelope—these are all things that the president relishes. He loves the idea of expanding executive power, particularly in the immigration space. And unfortunately, we have some people in the courts who are on that wavelength with him, who would be happy to hand over unprecedented power to this unprecedented president.

Sargent: Well, just to be clear, what he would do is essentially go back and reopen the initial awarding of naturalization to Mamdani, right? He would say in some way or other, OK, he actually was awarded this on false pretenses. Either he faked something involving his application, or he’s not someone who wishes happiness on the U.S., or he’s a communist or something like that. We had a Republican congressman actually say that Mamdani should be deported based on supposed support for terrorism. Karoline Leavitt actually said if that’s true, it should be investigated—so she opened the door here. Is that the basic mechanism: go back into it and recontest the initial awarding of naturalization?

Bier: Yeah, that’s right. As long as they can say somehow plausibly that he misrepresented his attachment to the principles of the Constitution or misrepresented that he had good moral character, they can try to go after him under these requirements. And of course, he’s obviously famous and will have the best attorneys in the world, but there are plenty of people out there who could become targets of this administration who will not have the best resources to defend themselves when the government turns their ire [toward] them.

Sargent: So let me ask you this then: When Trump says “some people say Mamdani is here illegally,” that “we’re going to look at everything” as in that video clip that we just played, that he’s got all the levers he needs to stop Mamdani, it’s very plausible that his people might already be exploring denaturalization as an option, right?

Bier: The Department of Justice has already laid out new guidelines to expand its denaturalization efforts against people who they say have misrepresented themselves when they were applying for citizenship. Now, it mostly talks about people who committed crimes in the U.S., who are terrorism threats. Under a normal administration, you’d interpret those things as yes, this is what they’re actually going to use this for—and maybe it will be primarily what they use it for. But of course, it opens up the opportunity to use it in other areas. Now we have all of these people whose jobs are dedicated to stripping people of their citizenship. You have the president saying, Well, we need to investigate people who are my political opponents for this. So it absolutely comes together in this moment.

He’s hearing we can denaturalize people. He sees a political opponent who’s saying things he doesn’t like. He absolutely will use this new task force that the Justice Department has created to go after people. And even in the memo itself—of course, it spends a lot of time on crime and terrorism, but it also has just a catchall in there that says that they can go after anyone who they think has misrepresented themselves to obtain U.S. citizenship. And obviously, he thinks that some of his political opponents may have done that, and this is an area where we could see a crackdown.

Sargent: I will tell you, it’s not particularly reassuring that they spend a lot of their time talking about crime and terrorism—because as we’ve seen over and over and over again, Donald Trump reserves the right to just say that migrants are criminals and terrorists simply by fiat. This is something that the White House actually believes he should be able to do with no restrictions whatsoever: to basically declare emergencies, to call immigration an invasion, to say that immigrants are terrorists and criminals. That’s really the context for understanding, I think, why it’s so terribly dangerous and scary for them to be saying, Well, we can denaturalize terrorists and criminals.

Bier: Yeah, absolutely. [If] you look at everything they say on just immigration in general, they lie about who they’re going after. They say it’s all criminals and terrorists and people who are threats. You saw what they did with the Alien Enemies Act already with deporting hundreds of people based on their tattoos. I have a rose tattoo, therefore I’m a part of a criminal gang—and [you’re] going to incarcerate [me] indefinitely in a foreign prison. And he’s already talked about using that same strategy against U.S.-born citizens: deporting them and sending them to El Salvador. So, again, he’s talking about it enough to the point where this is actually something we need to really take seriously, particularly with his total disrespect for human rights and civil liberties more generally.

Sargent: Well, let me ask you this, How do you expect this to unfold concretely? Trump reopens the question of whether his naturalization was legit, and then it goes to court? What do you expect to actually happen?

Bier: Yeah. They would have to file a complaint in a district court. There’ll be 60 days for a response from the defense, and then you’d have basically arguments about what these provisions mean, what the evidence is. There’d be potentially discovery. It could take months or even longer for that to get sorted out. And then at some point, a judge is going to make a determination. You’re either a citizen or you’re not anymore. And it’s retroactive—so it would be as if saying he was never a citizen all the way back to his naturalization, basically obliterates his record of citizenship forever.

Sargent: I think it’s plausible that he could try something like this. He’s certainly crazy enough, and the MAGA movement is bloodthirsty enough to want this outcome. I want to cite another line from Mamdani’s response to Trump. He accused the president of “division, distraction and hate” and said “voters will resoundingly reject this in November”—he means in the general election for New York mayor. Two things about this. One, he accused Trump of “hate.” Democrats don’t use that word enough to describe what Trump or MAGA are doing. Two, he framed the general election around this, saying it’s a referendum on Trump’s attacks on New Yorkers. Again, If you send your secret police after immigrants, you’re sending your secret police after all of us. Now, I don’t know what’s going to happen in the general election, but I really like to hear Democrats talk that way. What do you think, David?

Bier: It’s important to really frame this as an assault on all Americans. That is the central fact about all of these actions that he is taking. If free speech doesn’t apply to noncitizens, then free speech rights are eroded for all people in the U.S. Again, if a government agent sees your social media post and thinks, Oh, he’s opposing the foreign policy of the U.S., comes and knocks on your door and demands citizenship papers from you.… If you have to show your citizenship papers to have free speech in the U.S., free speech in the U.S. is gone. That is the actual situation already in the U.S. because of these arrests of noncitizens. So again, this is a threat to all of us. All of the responses should focus not just on how this is going to mistreat naturalized citizens or immigrants. It’s everyone in the U.S. who is going to be threatened by this unlawful, unconstitutional government.

Sargent: Yeah. Just to clarify, you’re talking about the students—people who are here on student visas. These are people who, as you said, did things as heinous as writing an op-ed in a student newspaper that Trump disagrees with. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has been trying to deport people who are here legally on that basis. That’s what you’re talking about, right?

Bier: It’s explicitly in the statute that he is relying on that this speech was lawful. It was not rioting. It was not vandalism. It’s not all of the things that they promote as what they’re targeting. No, this is for speech that was lawful—constitutionally protected advocacy—that they are targeting. And it’s not just international students. It’s also been legal permanent residents and green card holders who’ve been arrested and incarcerated for this. So again, this comes back to our rights as citizens—all of our rights. Because again, [if] the only way that you have the right to speak freely is if you show your passport, you really no longer have the right to speak freely in this country. We need to get control of this government again and get it back under the constraints of the Constitution.

Sargent: I think we need Democrats to talk about all of this in these big-picture terms. David Bier, so good to talk to you, man. Thanks for coming on.

Bier: Thank you.