Trump's Immigration Indecision
Plus: Nvidia honeypot, money-in-politics discourse, saving the president's soul, and more...
Reflective Trump: In an interview with Ross Douthat at 60 Minutes, President Donald Trump appeared genuinely interested in working out some sort of immigration deal with the new incoming Democratic Congress, and willing to blame Republicans' midterm losses—to some degree—on his administration's aggressive immigration blunders.
"Do you think the crackdown hurt you?" asked Douthat.
"I think it both helped and hurt," responded the president. "I think I got an A+ for closing up the border, because we had 25 million people come in through Biden over a four-year period, and many of those people were— as you know, they were from prisons, they were drug dealers, they were from mental institutions. They were from all over the world, not just South America….You had 11,888 murderers, most of whom, more than half of whom, committed more than one murder. They were allowed into our country. We've gotten most of 'em out….I get very high marks for getting the bad ones out. But I get hurt because we also took people that had good jobs, that— that created one violation, or breaking of the law, and that was that they came into the country illegally. Now, there is a large part of the country that think that they should be put out. And there's a large part of the country that think that they should be allowed to stay if they're good people working in a landscaping company, or workin' in a hotel, or doing something, right? And in some cases, paying taxes."
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"So you think your deportation policy went too far? It was too tough?" responded Douthat.
"I think it might be too tough, yeah," answered Trump. "And a lotta people would say that it's great. But a lotta people think it's too tough.
"When you go into a hotel and you say, 'Let me see your pass,' and you have a woman that's worked there as a maid, as a cleaner, as a this, as a that, as a waitress, a lotta good things, great job, and all of a sudden, they're being taken outta the country, it's tough," responded the president. "It's a tough thing. Also, 25 million people came in through [the] Biden [administration]. That's a lotta people to take out. But there's a group of people that I would say on the sort of pretty far right that would like everybody taken out.
"Do any of those people work in your administration?" pressed Douthat. "Yes," responded Trump, presumably referring to Stephen Miller, an immigration hardliner he had just elevated to chief of staff. "Well, there're a lotta those people," continued Trump. "Then there's also people that are more modified on that. In other words, get the killers out. Get the rapists out. Get the rough ones out. Get the drug dealers out. But let the people that are here, and in some cases here for 10 and 15 years, work a deal for them, OK?"
Later on, Trump expressed interest in working together with the Democrats on an immigration compromise. He even told Douthat he could refrain from insulting the opposing party for, say, 6 months, if that's what it required to work with Congress to get a deal passed.
Of course, this desire—to the extent that it's real, and not just something the president pulled out of his ass—is in tension with Miller's track record, and with pretty much everything he seems to support. "In addition to helping oversee the militarized crackdown of the U.S.-Mexico border, he set in motion the suspension of U.S. refugee programs and the deadly deportation crackdowns on American streets," reports The New York Times. Miller has demonstrated interest in having the president invoke the Insurrection Act, which would allow the federal government to deploy active-duty troops within domestic borders to suppress civil disorder.
That said, Trump is in charge, not Miller; Miller's job is to serve the president. But if Trump's goal is to pass comprehensive immigration reform, elevating Miller in advance of that seems like a strange tactical move.
Nvidia infiltrated: Jensen Huang, CEO of chipmaker Nvidia, is being investigated by his own board of directors after news broke that he was having an affair with a woman believed to be a Chinese spy, referred to as Alice Huang. "I was unfaithful to my wife," Huang said in a statement. "My actions hurt her and our children. There is no excuse for what I did. I am deeply sorry." Yes to all of that, but the thing the company (and shareholders, and the U.S. government) is worried about is not the morality of the affair; it's the degree to which the honeypot shared information on U.S. technology firms with Beijing.
Despite his status as chief executive and co-founder, Huang is heavily involved in the company's day-to-day operations. "If the board decides to punish Mr. Huang, there is no obvious successor, or even high-profile internal candidate, to run his giant chip company," reports The New York Times. The decisions Huang makes are extremely important, and Nvidia's been ascendant for the last few years: "Nvidia was the first publicly traded company to be valued at $5 trillion. Over this year and 2027, Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft are expected to spend a combined $1.842 trillion on capital expenditures like A.I. data centers, according to S&P Global Visible Alpha. Nvidia's chips fill those data centers."
Huang is close to President Donald Trump and has played a major role in shaping the federal government's A.I. policy. It's not clear how much his girlfriend knows or leaked back to the Chinese government. More on this as investigations bring more to light.
Scenes from New York: "Eighty-six people have died in fires in New York City so far this year, compared with 44 in the same time period last year, according to the Fire Department," reports The New York Times. "That includes four family members who died in an apartment fire in the Bronx last week after a lithium-ion battery caught fire overnight—a public safety hazard that has proliferated across the city this year….A major driving force behind the rise in fires and fire deaths is the increased prevalence of e-bikes, many of which are powered by chargeable lithium-ion batteries. Lithium-battery-related fires have injured 70 people and killed nine so far this year; one death is from a fire that first injured the victim in 2023. There have been 456 Fire Department investigations this year into blazes related to those batteries."
QUICK HITS
- "A selloff in tech stocks makes for a challenging backdrop to one of the most anticipated initial public offerings in history," notes The Wall Street Journal. "According to users of Kalshi's prediction market, Anthropic's chances of pulling off its listing this year have slumped to below 60%, down from nearly 90% on the eve of the midterms. Still, bettors remain confident that the IPO will happen in the next few months." Take with a grain of salt; it is Kalshi, after all.
- We don't only tax W2 earners:
Why did the wealth tax get crushed in CA? Was it because it was badly written? Was there any version of it that could have passed?
I'm not sure a state/level approach makes sense, given domestic capital mobility. But this thing where we only tax W2 earners isn't a great trend. https://t.co/dqvRqLNnXQ
— Joe Weisenthal (@TheStalwart) November 8, 2026
- How does money-in-politics discourse change after this? It's long been a bit simplistic, but this cycle has to complicate the narrative:
There's a lot to focus on right now, but "The richest man to ever live just spent $200 million to support the Republican Senate candidate in Texas, and his man lost by double-digits in a statewide wipeout" is a completely insane sentence.
Put another way, the most expensive US…
— Derek Thompson (@DKThomp) November 5, 2026
- I was not expecting Ross Douthat, in his new role at 60 Minutes, to try to help save Donald Trump's soul via pointed interview questions, but I kind of love it:
