Donald Trump promises to consider pardoning Julian Assange “very seriously”

Former President Donald Trump appeared on conservative commentator Tim Pool's podcast and left several statements where, among other things, he made several promises for a potential second term.

One of his first promises was about illegal immigration, with Pool questioning the former president about how he would manage to carry out a mass deportation.

The former president said he would follow the example of President Dwight David Eisenhower, who pursued a hardline immigration policy in the 1950s.

“So millions and millions of people are coming into our country. And it's not necessarily exactly what we want or had in mind. They have open borders where people just flow in, and many of those people are coming from prisons. Many of those people, frankly, are murderers and drug dealers. And they're coming from mental institutions. And they come from mental health institutions," Trump began before mentioning how his plan would partially work.

“It will really be done with local police. You know, the respect has been taken away. The honor has been taken away from our police forces. They're not allowed to do anything. And whether it's libertarian or not libertarian, people have to have law and order. You can't have 500 people walking into a department store and just walking out with everything they have,” Trump said, before mentioning Eisenhower.

“We're going to work very closely with the local police. And it's been done before. We had Dwight Eisenhower, believe it or not, did the biggest deportation. He pretty much stopped it. Strange that we mention Eisenhower because you don't think of him that way. But he did a massive deportation where people were pouring in.”

However, the most notable promise of the interview was not related to illegal immigration, where Trump did not address details about his plan, but in his promise to "seriously" consider pardoning WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

“The big question. Will you pardon Julian Assange?” Pool asked.

“Well, I'm going to talk about that today, and we're going to give it very serious consideration. And we're going to have a couple of other things to say in the speech that I think you're going to love. I've heard some rumors. And you've gotten so much out of me, I should leave a little bit for the speech, don't you think?" Trump responded to Pool during the recorded conversation, referring to the speech at the Libertarian National Convention that the former president made last Saturday night.

Before talking about Assange and illegal immigration, Trump and Pool immersed themselves in foreign policy, where the conversation also turned to what the former Republican president would do in a potential second term to address the different conflicts in the world, especially that of Ukraine with Russia and that of Israel with the terrorist group Hamas.

“In terms of foreign policy, perhaps it's a little bit of a biased interview, but I think you're the greatest president of my lifetime. Ending the wars that we should not have been involved in, now the fear is World War III. What are you looking at when you enter your next term to stop the escalation?” Pool asked Trump before revealing that he did not vote for him in 2016, in the race that pitted the Republican leader against Democrat Hillary Clinton.

“Well, first of all, I'm the only one that is going to stop World War III, because this man can't put two sentences together. He doesn't know what he's doing, doesn't know where he is. And amazingly, it seems like he's going to be running," Trump responded. “I don't want to see wars. "I wasn't in any wars, other than we finished a war with ISIS and completed it 100 percent. But I don't want to see wars. I think it's so horrible, so unnecessary, so costly in terms of lives and money. When you look at Ukraine, that would have never happened if I were president. You look at the October 7th attack on Israel, it would have never happened.”

Later, specifically, Pool and Trump talked about how the former Republican president addressed the threat posed by North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un.

“You crossed the demilitarized zone into North Korea with no security as a sign of goodwill and peace with the hostile nation. And I've had people tell me it never happened. So I think people need to know about it. I'm wondering if you can tell me how did that happen?,” Pool asked.

Trump revealed that, when he met with former President Barack Obama for the transfer of power, the Republican approached the Democratic leader and asked him what he thought about the North Korean dictator.

Obama, according to Trump, simply informed him that North Korea represented the most serious threat to the United States.

“He said the single greatest threat we have is North Korea. And I said, have you called them? Have you tried to talk to them? You know, little things like that,” Trump said, adding that as he began his rapprochement with North Korea, tensions quickly dropped at an accelerated pace.

“And as you know, there was certain hostility when I first started. And all of a sudden it boiled down to something that was very beautiful in the way it happened. And I got along with him very well. And I will say that if Hillary won that race, you would have had a nuclear war and millions of people would have been killed. And we didn't even come close to that. It never happened. It was never going to happen,” said the former president.