MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Donald Trump becomes the 47th president of the United States in just over a month. All through his campaign, Trump laid out a list - things he plans to accomplish in a second term, some of them on Day 1. They include closing the border, imposing tariffs, ending the war between Russia and Ukraine. Trump also campaigned on bringing down food prices. In fact, he told NBC's Kristen Welker that's the reason he won.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "MEET THE PRESS")
DONALD TRUMP: I won on the border, and I won on groceries. It's a very simple word - groceries. Like, almost - you know, who uses the word? I started using the word, the groceries. When you buy apples, when you buy bacon, when you buy eggs, they would double and triple the price over a short period of time. And I won an election based on that.
KELLY: Here to talk through the incoming president's long to-do list is one of the people working with him to get it done - senior adviser Jason Miller. He worked on all three of the president-elect's campaigns, and he's here in the studio with me now. Welcome.
JASON MILLER: Thank you.
KELLY: Let's dive in with the border. Will Trump close the U.S. Southern border on Day 1?
MILLER: Well, we're going to put the Trump policies back in place. So if you liked what we had during the first four years of the Trump administration, you're going to like what he's going to do. So we talk about Remain in Mexico. We talk about catch and release will be abolished, for example. Title 42 I would expect to be back, and there'll probably be some other measures. So literally on Day 1, these are things where there'll be EOs in place...
KELLY: Executive orders.
MILLER: ...Executive orders. So that's something that the president can sign. It doesn't have to go through Congress. So his policies...
KELLY: And, again, just on that basic question - close the border, not close the border, Day 1 - what's the timeline?
MILLER: Well, we're going to make it so if you're illegal and you're not coming in through a port of entry or if - even if you're trying to come into a port of entry illegally, you're not going to be allowed in. Now, when you say close the border, the impression is that nobody's allowed to go back and forth. What the border will be closed to is for people trying to enter the United States illegally. So there's a distinction. I want to make sure people don't think that all of a sudden, like, all trade between the countries or traditional commerce is going to be shut down or anything of that nature.
KELLY: And as you know, the president of Mexico has not fully signed off on these policies. Nor have some of the countries that Donald Trump would like to send these people back to. What happens if, say, Venezuela says, no, we're not taking them back?
MILLER: They'll take them back - and realizing, of course, that some leaders have to talk a little bit tough. They don't want to seem as though they're being steam-rolled. But the fact of the matter is that they're going to have to take them back.
KELLY: Why?
MILLER: They're not staying in the United States - because they're their people. And they're entering the United States illegally, and they're going to be sent back. So Day 1, the president can put his policies back in place to secure the border. And let's talk about the team that's working on that for a moment. We have Stephen Miller, who led that effort largely from inside the White House during the first administration, Tom Homan, who's the former ICE director. He'll be leading - but he'll be doing that a border czar position inside of the West Wing, inside of the White House. We'll also have Kristi Noem, who'll be the head of DHS - Department of Homeland Security. We have to get her confirmed first. Stephen and Tom...
KELLY: I was going to say, some of these are subject to Senate confirmation. Yeah.
MILLER: Right. And so Stephen and Tom do not need to be confirmed. They're already putting all of this together. So literally on Day 1, the president will start signing executive orders for the things that he can do unilaterally by himself.
KELLY: I want to play you something. This is from President Biden's former chief of staff for ICE, Jason Houser. He was speaking on This American Life. He was commenting on what he thinks the first weeks under Trump are going to look like, and he said they are, quote, "going to be hell."
JASON HOUSER: You're going to see kids not in your schools. You're going to know where they're at because they're waiting in a detention cell, and they have cellphones. You're going to see it in social media. You're going to see businesses not be able to open up because their workers didn't show up. You're going to see businesses being raided.
KELLY: Jason Miller, is he wrong?
MILLER: (Laughter) And I chuckle not because I'm taking the issue lightly, because it is such a bat-you-know-what insane comment for this gentleman to make. Here's the reality. Like I said, on Day 1, President Trump will close the border, put his policies back in place. We immediately will start moving to deport the criminal illegals who are here and already cleared and authorized and ready to go.
They'll immediately start to work on getting other criminal illegals who are detained, making sure that they're processed, and we can get them - 'cause there are certain legal actions that you have to go through with - on a case-by-case basis to get folks returned to their countries. And then working with local sheriffs, local police departments - we're going to focus on the criminal illegals. Think about the transnational gang members - TDA, MS-13. That is going to be the priority focus.
KELLY: Are you expecting to get sued over some of these policies? I'm remembering some of the chaos that ensued last time around. The first Trump administration, there was a ban on travel from Muslim-majority countries. All kinds of confusion followed.
MILLER: Well, obviously you can never determine exactly what people who oppose your policies will do, but I think that the experience level and the skill and the preparation coming into this administration, having done it once before, will have all of these executive orders be airtight, as well as the actions that DHS then goes and puts in place once Kristi Noem is in there and they start moving ahead.
KELLY: Let me shift you to grocery prices. We heard the president-elect a moment ago saying he believes he won on that issue. He also just told Time magazine that it is, quote, "hard to bring things down once they're up," meaning prices. Hard to bring them down once they're up - is he backtracking?
MILLER: No. I mean, two things can be true at the same time here. So let's talk about why inflation happened. I'll give you kind of the Reader's Digest version.
KELLY: Well, if I could actually direct you, I would love to hear the how. How is he going to bring grocery prices...
MILLER: Well, and that's...
KELLY: ...Down when he's saying it's hard?
MILLER: But it's important to also connect them - here's what happened, and here's why - 'cause I want people to have the confidence to know that this is something that he can do. When Biden came in, the first thing he did was start cutting off a lot of the energy exploration and repealing permits and things of that nature for where people were able to drill in the U.S. That caused energy to become more expensive.
KELLY: Got it.
MILLER: That was...
KELLY: But just in the time we have - grocery prices.
MILLER: Yeah. So think about it. How do you get apples to your local grocery store? How do you get the bakery deliveries? Everything drives on fuel. The other part, too - keep in mind under Biden and Harris, you had those two massive spending bills, which even the Biden-Harris supporters would admit caused an additional massive spike with regard to inflation. Those two things - getting the sound monetary policy back, as well as getting the energy exploration and the deregulation - that will have an immediate impact for what we do to start reversing that in particular regard to groceries.
KELLY: You're making the wider point that this is a complex issue, how we get the prices of eggs down...
MILLER: Well, not...
KELLY: ...How we get the prices of food down.
MILLER: I'd push back a little bit on that. And what I would say is that if you make energy cheaper, everything becomes cheaper. When you don't go and spend trillions of dollars that we don't have, and you get some fiscal sanity restored, then you can curb what future inflation will look like. And so I think this one-two punch will make a real difference in people's lives.
And look. I think what the president said to Kristen Welker was spot on. I mean, groceries was the reason. I mean, I live in a household where, I will admit, especially because I'm on the road so much, I don't do the majority of shopping. I went in to go get cereal. And I love my cereal when I'm home. And I went in, and, you know, my big, massive, jumbo-size, you know, box of - I like Crunch Berries. I know they're not super-healthy. It was, like, almost 9 bucks for this big box of cereal. It's like, what the hell is going - I mean, this hits people...
KELLY: It matters to people.
MILLER: It matters.
KELLY: People vote with their checkbooks, and they care about it. Just to ask about the interplay of the two things we've talked about so far - immigration, how expensive your cereal box is - would a crackdown on immigration not drive prices up rather than down? Tight labor market, things like agriculture, things like meat processing - those jobs are largely reliant on immigrant labor. How would a massive deportation program not end up driving up the prices of your cereal and my eggs?
MILLER: Yeah - great question. So I want to make sure that people understand what we're talking about is cutting down and completely stopping illegal immigration for people who are not legally authorized to enter our country to come into our country and start working. We're not talking about lowering the levels of legal immigration. So there are things called the H-2A visa, where seasonal agricultural workers are allowed to come in. Could there even be a conversation about that being expanded? Possibly. But you have to enter the country legally.
KELLY: Bottom line, you don't think it's mutually exclusive to crack down on immigration and bring back Trump policies that you believe were successful the first time around and yet bring down prices for Americans.
MILLER: Oh, you can do both...
KELLY: I'm asking...
MILLER: ...If that's the...
KELLY: I'm citing a Wall Street Journal poll. This was with economists taken the month right before the election. Only 12% of those economists thought that Trump was the better candidate on taming inflation.
MILLER: I mean, come on. All we have to do is look back at President Trump's first term, where we had four years, and he had 1.4% inflation. That's almost no inflation. I mean, usually anything below 2%, people view as being pretty good. One-point-four percent for his four years - and that's even with some of the tariffs that were put in place, with the tax cuts - that was such a phenomenal record. And...
KELLY: And I mentioned you were around in 2016, 2017. What is different this time? What did you learn from the first time around that will inform how you attack things this time?
MILLER: Yeah - another great question. It's fascinating to watch, having kind of had a front-row seat with all this with President Trump. In 2016, he knew what he wanted to do from kind of a macro vision - improve the economy, secure the border. Now he knows exactly how he wants to do it. So the fact that he had his entire cabinet named by Thanksgiving - he had a chief of staff, Susie Wiles, named before Thanksgiving, his kind of - his senior White House team. He knows exactly what it is.
So a lot of times when you have incoming presidents, they're trying to figure out - this sounds a little bit crass, but, you know, where's the bathroom? You know, what are the logistics? How does this place work? Not only does President Trump know how the West Wing and how the White House works. He knows how to do it with other foreign leaders as well and not even just foreign leaders. I was with him, for example, when Justin Trudeau called him a few weeks ago, and he...
KELLY: Of Canada - Justin Trudeau of Canada.
MILLER: Yes, of Canada. And he immediately started talking about the Canadian trade adviser, who's a tough negotiator in her own right. And, I mean, he knows the people going down and the finance ministers in these various countries. Those personal relationships are there to where he can just pick up the phone and make things happen. And I think Americans, whether you voted for President Trump or you didn't, have to respect the fact that he knows what to do and how to do it. And we're going to have strong leadership in the White House, and I think that will impress people as we start pushing forward to some of these agenda items.
KELLY: That is senior Trump adviser Jason Miller. Thanks for stopping by.
MILLER: Hey. Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF BADBADNOTGOOD AND GHOSTFACE KILLAH SONG, "STREET KNOWLEDGE FEAT. TREE") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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